The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel
by William Easley
Summary: August 2016: Stan's Lodge Hall may or may not be haunted. When the place is plagued with spooky sounds and sights, who ya gonna call? The Mystery Twins, of course! Fist bump.
1. Chapter 1

I do not own the show GRAVITY FALLS or any of the characters; both are the property of the Walt Disney Company and of Alex Hirsch. I make no money from these stories but write just for fun and in the hope that other fans enjoy reading them.

* * *

 **The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **1: Little Things Scream a Lot**

 **(July 9, 2016)**

Traditionally, the business meetings of the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel, Columbia River District East Chapter, Lodge 618, Gravity Falls, occurred on the second Saturday of every month at seven P.M. The July 2016 meeting fell on the ninth, and it was routine. They heard the Secretary's Report, approved the minutes from June, heard the Treasurer's Report, heard the Charity Committee's report, heard this and that and the other report, and within half an hour they were ready to fold up the tents.

Then as New Business was about to close, somebody said, "Wait, I got something." He rose ponderously to his feet, brandishing a calendar. Sheriff Blubs said, "Fellow Mackerels, I feel I just gotta ask, can we postpone the date of our next meeting to the week after? August 20th? It's urgent."

Vice-Wahoo Stanley Pines, subbing for Supreme Wahoo Milt Befufftlefumpter, who was out of town, asked why. Well, technically, he asked, "Aw, for corn sakes, Daryl! Not again. What kinda cockamamie question is that? Why'd we wanna change the date?"

"Because look at what it is!" Blubs said. He held up the calendar, which had the second Saturday in August circled in red. "Look here, y'all. The second Saturday in August is the thirteenth!"

Deputy Durland, who'd been sitting next to the sheriff, jumped up, his face pale with alarm, and drew his sidearm. "Whut! Whut? Friday the Thirteenth comes on a Saturday next month?"

"Now, now," Blubs said in a comforting tone, patting Durland's shoulder. "Holster your weapon, Deputy. That is an order."

"Is it OK, Sheriff?" Durland asked. But he put his sidearm back in the holster. "Were you just joking?"

"Naw," Blubs said. "It's for real. The next meeting falls on the thirteenth of the month! Gentlemen, I put the question before you: do we seriously want to risk calling down the wrath of bad luck on our Lodge?"

The Gravity Falls contingent of the R.O.H.M. numbered thirty-three, which was a Royal Number and typical of smaller Lodges. The last time they had inducted a new member had been back in 2012, when old Mayor Befufftlefumpter died. They'd tapped his great-grandson, Milt, who ran a modest but profitable concrete and asphalt paving business, as the late mayor's replacement, and he'd come in as a Small Fry, progressed rapidly through the ranks of Sierra and Streak, and then had become a full-fledged Wahoo. No Lodge could have more than one Supreme Wahoo. Stan had been hoping for the honor, since he'd been a Wahoo Second Class for twelve years, but—well, Milt had charisma. So he'd gained the dot in the fish's mouth on his fez, and as a Supreme Wahoo, he also was entitled to wear the gold tassel.

Stan almost quit in disgust, but then he reflected that Milt often had business out of the valley and so very often he, Stan, the only other Wahoo (Wahoo Second Class, though) would serve as the chairman's substitute, the vice-Supreme Wahoo, would hold the gavel and conduct the meetings and be important and all, so he hung in there.

Now he banged the gavel. "Ah, come on, Darryl," he said. "Every time the date's the thirteenth, you move that we postpone, and we never do, and then you skip the meeting and nothing happens! This is gettin' stupid. Are we gonna believe in dumb superstitions? I for one say we should believe only in smart superstitions!"

Durland thought this over and said, "He's got a point. I withdraw my objections."

Blubs vacillated. "Well, I still don't like it," he muttered. "Could we take a sense-of-the-meeting vote?"

"Is there a motion on the floor?" Stan asked.

Durland looked sheepish. "Naw, I think that's just where I stepped in some dog poo and tracked a little in."

A merciful Tyler Cutebiker said, "So moved."

"Tats" Chin seconded.

"All right," Stan said, looking around the room. "Everybody who says to ignore the thirteenth and go ahead with our monthly meeting for August as scheduled, signify by raising your right hand."

A forest of hands went up, and Stan said, "Help me count 'em, Bud."

Bud Gleeful stood up and pointed as he counted. "I make it twenty-seven," he said.

"So do I. OK, those who wanna cancel and re-schedule, hold up your hands." Stan face-palmed. "Wait, those who wanna have the meeting as scheduled, you guys put down your hands. Now, those who wanna cancel and re-schedule, hold up your hands and let us count."

"Six," said Bud.

"Yeah, I make it six, too," Stan said. "But we only got twenty-nine here at this meeting. So who voted twice, aside from Durland?"

Tad Strange was one. "I'm of two minds," he explained. Tyler was another. "As Mayor, I hate taking sides." Durland must have felt he owned an explanation, but after trying to think of one, he said instead, "I forgot the question?"

But Blubs, Poolcheck, and Horace Ornrey had voted only for re-scheduling. Poolcheck was superstitious, like Blubs, and Ornrey always voted against the majority just on principle.

"OK, make it, um, twenty-three to three to three, motion carried." Stan whacked the gavel. "The next business meeting of the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel will take place as scheduled at seven P.M., August thirteenth. Note that in the minutes, Woody. And for Pete's sake, leave your wife in her cage for that meetin'. Meetin's are for Lodge members only, not for woodpeckers."

"Don't hurt her feelings," Woody Ecker whispered, but he made the note. From her perch on his shoulder, his wife the woodpecker looked down at his notebook with interest. She liked the taste of Number Two pencils.

"There, any further business? No? Goin' once, goin' twice, gone. Do I hear a motion to adjourn?"

Somebody in the back said, "So moved," and Roger Blunch, the oldest member now that old Mayor Befufftlefumpter was gone, woke up and said, "Seconded."

"Any opposed? No?" Stan whacked the gavel again. "July meeting stands adjourned at eight oh one P.M. Let's have our ribs dinner, and then—who brought the cards?"

* * *

The R.O.H.M. met in its Lodge Hall, the big long room above the Skull Fracture. The Hall, according to the rules in the _R.O.H.M. Guide for Members_ , was formally known as the Fishing Grounds. The front wall sported a huge dark-yellow banner on which the Sacred Symbols were properly blazoned in the correct colors: the Holy Horns of the Water Buffalo, the death mask of the Pharaoh Bate-Ur-Hoek, the Golden Crown of the Kingfish Mackerel, and the three Stars of Inspiration.

OK, the symbols didn't make a heck of a lot of sense as symbols of a lodge named for a saltwater fish, but when the first American lodge was founded by Quentin Trembley in 1833, those were the only items he could get at the Gentlemen's Lodge Supply's remnants sale, so they were stuck with them.

Anyway, the lodge hall occupied half of the top floor of the bar, the eastern half. The other side had a storage room, a small office, a toilet, with LODGE MEMBERS ONLY on a plaque on the door. Back around 1945 somebody had pencil-scrawled under it "members, ha!" Nobody had ever bothered to try to erase the addendum because probably nobody got the off-color implication. Adjoining the bathroom and sharing its plumbing was a small, smelly janitor's closet. Finally, there was a door that opened to the stair leading down to the first floor and the bar. It was a narrow stair, wide enough for one person at a time.

Stan, Durland, and Ecker lingered behind for a few minutes, Durland mopping the floor where he'd left a series of brown left-shoe prints, Ecker locking the Secret Sacred Proceedings of the Sacred Secrets of the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel, Eastern Columbia River Division, Gravity Falls School, Lodge 618, in the Secure Secret Repository of Sacred Secrets (a dime-store tin lock-box they never locked because in 1952 somebody had lost the key), and Stan waited impatiently to close up.

"All done?" he asked at last. "Durland, be sure to rinse out that mop before hangin' it in the janitor's closet. Let's go get us some ribs!"

He ceremonially locked the door to the Hall and hung the key on a hook beside the door. Somebody had once lost that key, too, and for a year the members had to climb up a ladder from the parking lot up to the Hall's one window to get in before a vacancy opened and they voted in a locksmith, who was promised rapid promotion if he re-keyed the door without charge. Since then, the door to the Sanctum of Secrets sensibly hung not a foot from the doorknob.

The Brothers of the Lodge had a good meal, and more than half of them hung around for the poker and the blackjack and the hearts and what-have you that began at nine. By midnight, Stan came out ahead—thirteen bucks, not bad for Gravity Falls.

But Sheriff Blubs shook his head at that, too. "Thirteen again!" he said. "I tell you, it's an omen!"

"One of them guys that marries a dozen wives?" Durland asked.

"No," Blubs said patiently. "That's 'Mormon,' and they don't do that anymore."

"Look, Daryl," Stan said, rubbing his eyes. "It ain't an omen, it ain't a sign of evil, it ain't nothing but superstition, OK? Come on, we're Mackerels! We don't believe in supernatural crap! Remember the Membership Oath, where we swear that we don't harbor any superstitions by the Ghost of the Pharaoh Bate-Ur-Hoek?"

"Well," Blubs said reluctantly. "All right, I guess. But I'm gonna wear my lucky rabbit's foot!"

"That the one you got off the rabid rabbit?" Durland asked.

"It wasn't rabid! It was just a screwy rabbit!" Blubs said. The two walked off, quibbling. Stan shook his head, said goodnight to Tats, who was not only bouncer but the night watchman and had a little bedroom and bathroom to himself in the back, and Tats locked up after him.

In the parking lot, Stan stretched and yawned. It was barely midnight, but it had been a tiring week—he and Ford had traveled to Las Vegas for several days, where Stan had won a nice pot of dough at the tables of various casinos. There'd been a little disagreement with one of the joints' strong-arm guy, but that blew over. Next meeting and ceremonial gambling party, he thought, would go on longer, because people would be over the Fourth of July craziness, the late hours for fireworks and all.

He unlocked his El Diablo, the one everybody in town called the Stanleymobile, and got in. Before starting the engine, he glanced up at the window on the top floor of the Skull Fracture, the only one in the Lodge Hall. It was dark, as it was supposed to be. Tats grumbled if they forgot to turn off the light and ran the electricity bill up by seventy-five cents.

Stan yawned again and then blinked. He thought—naw, couldn't be. Just a trick of the light, some random reflection or some deal.

"Well-p," he muttered, "Sheila's waitin' up for me. Startin' the engine, doo de dah doo." He backed the Stanleymobile out into the alley, and then headed for his new home, where he and Sheila were still sort of settling in, only a mile from town. He could have walked that, easy. Heck, Dipper and Wendy _ran_ that, as well as a full circuit of the town and back to the Shack again, practically every morning. Four miles a day they did.

Stanley had never told them, but he was proud of them.

Singing a narration of the trip, as was his habit ("Now I'm drivin' through a red light, 'cause ain't no traffic or cops around, and now I'm turnin' on the road to the Shack . . ."), Stan leaned back and drove home happy, sober, and thirteen bucks ahead of the game.

Tats was already in bed, not asleep but propped up on a couple of pillows, reading Kant's _Kritik der reinen Vernunft_ on his Kintel tablet, his brow furrowed. He muttered, "Well, yeah, but if you reject empiricism, how do you objectively test your conclusions?"

Upstairs, in the darkened Lodge Hall, something moved.

Something that shone with a faint, blue glow—the kind that a decaying fish sometimes shows. If you walk along a beach far enough on a dark night, you'll probably see some dim shining glows of greenish-blue. Funny thing, if you look straight at it, it goes away. You can only see it from your peripheral vision, this postmortem fluorescence. If you get very close, you'll smell it and then go away fast. Dead fish are not roses.

It didn't come from a fish, but that was the kind of phosphorescent light given off by the—well, not even a shape, really. But it, some sort of low-power glow, floated around a little in the Lodge Hall.

It pulsed as if trying its strength. If an observer had been there, holding his or her breath, listening hard, the observe might have heard something that sounded like crazed, terrifying, screams, but very faint, very distant, like a speaker with the volume turned all the way down to one, or like the sound of the neighbor's TV from three houses down the street.

However, no one was there to see or hear, and the glow and screams faded and died, leaving the R.O.H.M. premises in the silent dark. Or the dark silence, they're pretty much the same thing.

But if an observer _had_ seen it—one like Dipper Pines, maybe—that observer would have had an uneasy sense that _something_ had begun.

And a strange foreboding that the weird light would return.

Perhaps in a month.

On the thirteenth.


	2. Chapter 2

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **2: Saturday the Thirteenth**

 **(August 13, 2016)**

Sheriff Blubs called Stanley that morning to tell him he wouldn't make it to the Lodge meeting. "Got a lot of important law-enforcement stuff that came up all of a sudden," Blubs said.

"Uh-huh," Stan said flatly. "Daryl, you're a wimp."

"Stanley," Blubs responded, "I'm telling you, I got a bad feeling about this."

"Yeah, you sound like Han Solo," Stan said. "OK, see you at next month's meeting, then. That'll be September tenth. Is ten an unlucky number for you, too?"

"Nah, ten's OK."

Stan rolled his eyes as he hung up. His wife Sheila came to the breakfast table, refreshed both of their coffees, and stood for a moment massaging Stan's broad shoulders. "You're tense, sweetie."

"Yeah, just aggravated," Stan said. "Sheriff Blubs is too superstitious to come to the Lodge meetin' tonight. And his deputy thinks Friday the Thirteenth can come on any day of the week! Like Christmas! He should know that Friday the Thirteenth always comes on the same day—like the day Columbus discovered America."

"Well, don't let it bother you." She gave him a kiss and then sat down and reached for the newspaper. They subscribed to the _Gossiper,_ but she preferred the _Oregonian._ "Anyway, you won't much miss Blubs and Durland."

"Nah, but he spooks everybody. Every time Saturday falls on the thirteenth, he wants to postpone the meeting, and we always vote not to postpone, but then when the day comes, half the members come with 'excuses.'" Stan's hooked fingers drew air quotes around the last word. "Every year has two Saturday the thirteenths—"

"No, some years there's only one, and other years there can be as many as three." Sheila delicately sipped her coffee, which was quite hot.

"Yeah? I didn't know that," Stan said. "But anyways, back in the winter, February? I think it was February. Anyways, the lodge meeting fell on Saturday the Thirteenth, and that evening we had twelve of the members show up. Twelve! Not even a quorum."

"So you just played cards," Sheila said, smiling.

Stan snorted. "Ha! Stupid games like Baseball and Jacks-or-Better. Twelve's a terrible number. Too many for a good game of straight stud. So we divide up into sixes and then play a crappy watered-down version. And 'cause we don't even have the meeting, it goes on for hours!"

"I have never known you to complain about gambling before," Sheila said. "You feel all right, dear?"

"Yeah, yeah, it's just that if I'm gonna gamble, I want the game to be interestin'." He picked up the phone again. "I'm gonna start callin' all the members and urging them to show up tonight. Hmm. I think I'll tell 'em that the rulebook says we can fine 'em twenty-five bucks if they miss a meeting for an inadequate excuse like superstition."

"Is that in the rulebook?" Sheila asked.

Stan shrugged. "Meh, who knows? I got the rulebook somewhere in the house, probably in one of the boxes we haven't unpacked yet. But nobody's read it, so they'll take my word for it." He pushed up from the table. "I'm gonna go to my study and get the list of Lodge phone numbers. OK to take the coffee?"

"Sure," she said, smiling. "As long as you don't grumble about it if you set it on the billiard table and turn it over and have to have the felt re-done."

"That was _one_ time! And it was Fiddleford's billiard table, so I had to do the honorable thing and fix what I'd messed up."

"How many times have the McGuckets actually played billiards?"

"None, that I know of," Stan said. "But Fiddleford likes to put his model railroad set on it."

That was true. It was quite small, T-gauge, and when fully set up, the track wound through a tiny town populated by minute robots that Fiddleford created in his spare time. A few of them had escaped, probably through the table pockets, and were just possibly setting up a nearly microscopic civilization of their own behind the baseboards. Anyway, something in there now and then holds hootnannies.

However, instead of taking his coffee downstairs, Stan stood and drained the cup in a couple of gulps. "Good coffee, hon," he said. He bent to kiss Sheila, and she said, "Have fun. I hope you get your quorum."

"I think I will," he said with his trademark grin. "You know I can be a persuasive guy."

* * *

He reached all of the other Mackerels, and after about two hours, he had promises for twenty-nine of them to come to the meeting. Milt Befufftlefumpter was surprised to hear of the problem. "Blubs being a nervous Nellie again?" he asked. "That's ridiculous. Tell the rest that I'm coming and if they stay out because of the number thirteen, they're just being a bunch of lady kittens."

Stan did tell the others that, though he used a more compact word. Even Durland said he'd be there, and Stan said, "Good. Convince your boss. We never had a full meeting with every single Mackerel there when this calendar coincidence happens. Let's do it one time and put this superstition to rest."

Durland said, "I didn't understand hardly none of that, but I'll tell him he should come."

"Do that," Stan said.

The effort left him with mild heartburn, so he told Sheila he'd head up the hill to the Shack. "I'll take a turn as Mr. Mystery," he said. That always cheered him up.

It was another hot August day. Stan dressed lightly for the walk up the hill, white jeans and a blue Hawaiian shirt. He'd just reached the edge of the parking lot when he heard laughter behind him. He turned and grinned—Dipper and Wendy were walking up the hill, obviously finishing their morning runs. "Hiya, knuckleheads," he said cheerfully. "Pardon me for askin', but ain't it a little bit warm for running?"

Both of them gleamed with sweat. Dipper's tee shirt clung to him, and Wendy's, well yeah, when it got a little wet with perspiration, it did interesting things. Wendy laughed. "Better to do it in the morning than wait until it's like a hundred degrees!" she said.

"Oh," Stan said evilly, "you kids _like_ doin' it in the morning, do you?"

"Running!" Dipper said hastily. " _Running_ in the morning, she meant!"

"Wendy, tell my nephew to get his mind outa the gutter for a change," Stan said.

Even though Dipper must have known by then how Stan's teasing played out, he turned even pinker. "Never mind," he said.

Stan opened the gift-shop door and held it for them. "You guys go get your showers and change clothes. I'll brew up a pot of coffee," Stan told them.

"Hey, no eggshells this time, OK?" Dipper said. "I don't like eggshells in coffee!"

"That's how cowboy coffee is made!" Stan said. "But if you wanna be a baby kitten—wait, that's not right—never mind, I'll just make a straight pot."

* * *

By the time Dipper and Wendy had showered (yes, separately, as always) and changed clothes, Stan had slipped into his Mr. Mystery costume, but he hung the black jacket over the back of a chair. The kids found him sitting at the table teaching Tripper, the dog, to sit still with a snack on his nose until Stan gave him permission to eat it. "Smart dog!" Stan said. "When does he get the dumb cone off?"

"Monday, Dr. Setter says," Dipper told him. "He's already picked up the trick?"

"Watch him. Sit. Good boy. Hold still." Stan balanced a little Puppity Chew-Chew on his nose. "Stay. Stay. Ready? Get it!"

And Tripper jerked his head, tossing the goodie up in the air, then tilted his head back and caught it.

"Great," Wendy said. "Good boy!"

Tripper loved praise, and he wagged practically everything from his ears back.

Melody came in and said she'd start breakfast, but Dipper and Wendy told her to sit and they'd take care of it. "Let 'em, Mel," Stan advised. "They're like a well-greased team when they do stuff together."

"How 'bout flapjacks, turkey sausage, and fries?" Wendy asked.

"Sounds great," Melody said. "Soos will be here in a minute. I think Abuelita's up now, and she'll bring Harmony in when she comes."

Now, the word "flapjack" is archaic in the U.S. In the United Kingdom, it means a kind of oat cake, baked rather than pan-fried, and often incorporating dried fruit. Wendy's dad had taught her how to make lumberjack flapjacks: flour, some oat bran, beaten eggs, buttermilk, melted butter, some sugar, and usually chopped dried apples or raisins, and fried up thick in a hot skillet.

While Wendy mixed the batter, Dipper quickly zapped half a dozen potatoes in the microwave, then peeled and chopped them. He added a mild chopped onion and put them into a big hot cast-iron skillet with just enough oil. As they started to sizzle, he added a second big skillet and started the link sausages.

Mabel bopped in from having visited her pigs and approved of the menu. Soos, Little Soos, and Abuelita and Harmony showed up. Stan asked, "Hey, Soos, OK if I take a turn as Mr. Mystery this morning?"

"Sure Mr. P—I mean, sure, Stan!" Soos said enthusiastically. "Hey, the crowds are pickin' up again, so the Gnomes will be here to do their dance. Don't forget to tell the people on the Mystery Tram that they can see them at fifteen minutes past the hour from ten until twelve and then from two until five."

"Got it," Stan said. "Who wants coffee?"

All the adults except Melody. Abuelita often drank tea, but coffee with a couple of spoons of brown sugar—always brown, she had individual tastes—and a big sprinkle of cinnamon was her standing order when she wanted coffee. Unless it was her after-dinner treat, Mexican coffee, that featured Kahlua, tequila and vanilla ice cream. Stan took his coffee black, no sugars this time—he'd gained about five pounds over the summer and Sheila wanted him to be careful, so he was doing that. Mabel, Wendy, and Dipper all wanted a dollop of whole milk, no sugar. Soos took everything, dawg—cinnamon, regular sugar, milk, a shot of vanilla flavoring, and if he remembered it, coffee.

"These are so good!" Abuelita said after one bite of the flapjacks. "So _dulce_ , but they stick to the ribs, no?"

Wendy laughed. "Yeah, my Dad says a breakfast like this can keep a logger goin' all day!"

"Mabel, don't give Tripper people food," Dipper said.

She was cutting a sausage link into little bits and tossing them, keeping score by how many stayed in the cone, two points a shot. "But he likes it!" she said.

"Tell him to sit," Stan said.

Mabel gave the command, and Tripper sat.

"Now take one of those sausage bits and balance it in his nose."

"Really?"

"Trust me, kid. Try it."

Mabel did, as Stan commanded, "Stay . . . stay. . . ."

"Will he wait for the command?" Mabel asked.

"Oh, yeah. Tell him whenever you want."

"Get it!" Mabel said, and she laughed as Tripper did the nose-toss and expert smacking catch. "He's so smart!"

Everybody fussed over Tripper while Dipper, Mabel, and Wendy washed, dried, and put away the breakfast things. "Teek comin' over?" Wendy asked Mabel.

"Well, yeah. He still works here!" Mabel said. "He'll be in around ten. I guess I'll start on the second gift-shop register until we see how big the crowds will get. If they're not all that big, I'll find something else to do."

Wendy pinned on her gold employee badge— _Wendy, Asst Mgr—_ and Dipper his—Dipper, _Sales._ At her own request, Mabel's read _Mabel, Wndr Grl._ Soos and Stan, as Museum Guide and Mr. Mystery respectively, didn't need no stinking badges.

"Heads up," Wendy said as she looked out the gift-shop door window at about three minutes to nine. "The Oregoner and the Columbian tourist buses just pulled in out there, and they look packed."

"Here we go!" Mabel crowed. "Let's make this a lucky Saturday the Thirteenth, everybody!"

"Oy," her Grunkle complained. "Don't _you_ start in on that, too!"

* * *

While the Pines group dealt with a big flood of tourists, down in town Tats was just getting back to the Skull Fracture from his breakfast in Greasy's Diner. He unlocked the back door and went into the bar, checking to make sure everything would be ready by opening time, eleven. It looked pretty good. Floors were clean, no broken glass or little puddles of blood or other fluid underfoot.

He opened a box-store large economy size can of mixed nuts and filled the nut bowls. He made sure the ice maker was working—it had been cranky during the hottest days, but it held a mountain of crescent-shaped cubes now, enough for the day's business.

Then he stopped, his head tilted, and he looked up at the ceiling. There it was again.

"Plumbin'," he muttered. "Gotta be."

The sounds had come and gone over the past week. Never loud. Just a slow, stately thumping, as if someone in soft shoes were walking back and forth on the floor above. Back to front and then return, over and over.

But he'd checked the Lodge Hall and the rest of the second floor, and no one was there. And from there he didn't hear the sounds.

Then, dang it, as soon as he started downstairs, there they were again, _thump . . . thump . . . thump._

"Best get Gillis to take a look tonight after the meeting," Tats told himself Tim Gillis was a plumber and also a Striped Mackerel, about halfway up the ranks. If Tats could get Milt and Stan to agree, he might promise Gillis a Lodge promotion in lieu of money if Gillis would track down the loose pipe it was that made the slow walking sound.

Had to be plumbing. Couldn't be a person. Couldn't be a, well, ghost.

 _Naw._

' _Course not._

 _Couldn't be_.


	3. Chapter 3

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **3: Something Wicked**

 **(August 13, 2016)**

In the early afternoon of that Saturday, a group of thirteen bikers dropped in at the Skull Fracture for a little refreshment. With the _other_ biker gang name already taken, they called themselves "Satin's Angles." They had no idea why English teachers bullied them so much when they wore their leathers emblazoned with the name on the back. Chrome studs don't come with spell-checkers, you see.

The Ark Angle (there's that spelling issue again) was Honker Dillinberg, who got his name because in his square life he drove a big rig and loved nothing so much as blasting his air horn randomly on superhighways, often causing minor spasms in mild-mannered drivers ahead of him. He was tall and burly (though with a beer gut that overhung so much his feet never got wet in a rainstorm), and he wore his wraparound shades 24/7. Even while sleeping. In fact, his face was so deeply tanned except for his eye sockets that he looked a little bit like a negative image of a raccoon.

While the rest of the boys were relaxing with brews and hot dogs and playing their own brand of pool (Cues? We don't need no stinkin' cues!), Honker felt a call of nature and made his way down the hallway past the back room (private games of chance were often held there), the small kitchen and freezer (food choices were limited in the Skull Fracture), the storage room, janitor's closet, and finally, the splintered, banged-up doors marked GENTLEMEN and LADIES.

If the labels had been a requirement for entry, then during the entire existence of the Skull Fracture, neither toilet would ever once have been flushed. However, the signs denoted only gender rather than the implied social classes.

At urinals, Honker liked to aim for the little deodorant cakes. He had a fantasy of completely dissolving one, but that had never happened. Didn't this time, either. He finished up, zipped up, and then stopped to wash his hands. Not many of the Satin's Angles did, but he was the leader, so he tried to provide a decent example of how a moral degenerate should behave.

He ran the water in the stained sink until it heated up, then started to wash his hands. He did not get a dollop of the liquid soap from the dispenser above the sink, because he knew that some guys like to kid other guys in a good-natured way by urinating in the dispensers. He often did that himself.

He hummed while scrubbing, ignoring the fact that plain water, unassisted by powerful cleaning agents like soap or muriatic acid, was sadly inadequate for the task of removing years of ingrained oil, blood, sweat, and tears. His sweat, but the other bodily fluids always came from donors.

A cheap mirror—not even glass, probably—had been mounted to the wall above the sink perhaps forty years earlier and never once in all that time cleaned. These days, it was almost as reflective as the surface of a damp mushroom, but Honker wet his hands, slicked back his bushy brown hair, and squinted at a splotch that might have been his reflection.

Huh. The face looked wrong. The glasses made his reflection (if it was indeed his) look very, um, skully. And pale. He took off the shades and leaned close.

The face in the mirror leaned close. It looked emaciated, nearly glowing a pale, pale green. "I knew I shouldn'ta et that roadkill possum," Honker grunted. He figured maybe a shot or two of the Skull Fracture's cheapest bourbon might sterilize whatever malevolent marsupial microorganisms he had running amuck in his system, though—

Now, this was weird. The reflection looked like it was moving on its own.

Two bony hands burst out of the mirror, seized Honker's shoulders, and pulled him into the reflection.

He made a mental note to leave roadkill off his own personal menu from now on.

The face was much clearer now and looked like that of a woman, though nearly lost in curls of some thick, greeny-yellowy mist, like the atmosphere in Beijing on a particularly high-particulate bad air day. "Ma'am," Honker said, "I believe I might be sick and out of my head."

The face opened its mouth impossibly wide.

The last thing it swallowed was Honker's desperate, thrashing feet. The boots stuck before the monster slurped, like a two-year-old with a dangling strand of pasghetti, and then nothing at all was left in the mirror. It reflected only on the back of the men's room door.

* * *

Out in the bar, at about the same moment, "You guys!" yelled Tats. "Hey! Cut it out right now, or I moana haveta ask you to leave."

This, it should be noted, was his bouncer-speak. Though most people in Gravity Falls were not aware of it, actually Tats had been well-educated and held a Bachelor's in Literary Theory, complete with a phi beta kappa key to show how studious he had been. Unfortunately, after college he had not been able to find proper employment, since employers tended to assume that someone holding a B.L.T. was more suited to a career as a short-order cook than a teacher of college English.

That so embittered Tats that he almost never spoke of his credentials. In fact, of all the Skull Fracture regulars, only Ghost Eyes knew about his college degree, and that was because Ghost Eyes himself had been an honor student and held a B.A. in Philosophy. He, too, had been unable to find employment in his field of expertise, since these days, nobody seemed to be hiring philosophers. He had recently gone back to college for a degree in business, and now things were breaking for him at last—though he still had a couple semesters to finish up, which he could do part-time in night school, he'd already found a good entry-level position with a consulting firm in The Dalles, one that specialized in consulting other consultants on how to improve their consulting. It was a long commute, but Ghost Eyes told him the salary and prospects for promotion and raises justified the expense. "You ought to go back to school too, my brother," Ghost Eyes had told him.

"I'll think about it," Tats had said. "I suppose it's all like Spinoza said."

"To a limited extent," Ghost Eyes agreed. "But remember your Leibniz."

"Good point, good point," Tats said. "But I find that Dewey cancels out Leibniz."

"Yeah, you're right. Ain't no thang anyway, brother."

"Ain't no big thang," Tats agreed.

But going back to school for a degree that might promise some prospect of employability was something to think about. And that was what he'd been idly considering up to the point when four of the Satin's Angles broke out in an argument punctuated with hurled billiard balls. One nearly broke the big mirror behind the bar, but Tats caught it in his big right hand with a solid _smack_! "That's enough," he said. "Pay your tab and hit the road, 'fore I hit it with y'all!"

Within the next minute, the dozen Satin's Angles discovered that Tats never made ineffectual threats. He did collect what they owed and he did throw them out—literally—and a lot of them did hit the road, though others hit, variously, the sidewalk, a fireplug, and a passing pickup truck full of manure.

Seeing double but satisfied that they'd put up a good fight—the one last week had been only half a minute long, so they'd doubled their time-in-ring with Tats—they jumped on their hogs and roared out of town. Only very late that afternoon did they realize that somebody was missing. They were no better at counting than at spelling, though, so they never did quite make out that the sole missing member was Honker.

It was as if their fearless leader had just been swallowed up.

* * *

Around five in the afternoon, the crowds in the Mystery Shack slacked off. Soos said, "Gee, Mr. Pines, I mean Stan, that was a long day!"

"Yeah, real busy, but not too bad," Stanley said, stretching and arching his back. "Aggh, I ain't used to standing on my feet all day any more. How'd we do?"

"Um, admissions were real good, but I don't have all the figures yet," Soos said. He called to Dipper, at the register. "How were sales, Dipper?"

Dipper gave them two thumbs-up. "Nice! We even unloaded six of those Day of the Dead serapes at ninety-nine bucks each."

That made Stan grin. "You done good, Soos!" he said. The previous winter, while visiting family in Mexico, Soos had stumbled upon a supplier that sold the serapes for two dollars apiece, and he made a profit at that. Soos had picked up a gross. The markup meant a very nice margin for the Shack.

"Thanks, Mister, I mean Stan. They seemed a natural for us."

"I'm gonna grab a cup of coffee," Stan said. "Call me if enough suckers show up to call for another Mystery Trail trip, and I'll take 'em out."

"Sure thing, but won't drinking coffee this late in the day, like, keep you awake tonight?" Soos asked.

Stan shrugged. "Meh, don't matter. Lodge meetin' tonight. Uh. Sorry, Soos, shouldn't have mentioned the Lodge. I know it's a sore point."

Soos grinned, though a little sadly. "No, don't worry about it. I mean, sure, I'd _like_ to be a Mackerel, but since there's only room for thirty-three—well, don't worry about it."

"Tell you what," Stan said. "The very next time we have an opening, I'll put your name up for membership."

Soos's big face lit up. "Would you? Thanks, Mister, I mean Stan! Tell them I'd be the best Mackerel ever!"

"I sure will."

When Stan left for the kitchen—Teek had closed up the snack bar a little past two—Wendy came over. "Hey, Soos, what's the deal with wantin' to be in the lodge, man? All those guys do is drink beer and eat together once a month and then play cards and junk."

Soos sighed. "Yeah, I know. But since I became Mr. Mystery, people in town, like, like me and all, but except for the Chamber of Commerce, I'm not really connected, you know, to the community and junk. I'd just like, sort of have a little more social network and stuff."

"Well, good luck with that," Wendy said.

Soos went back to lead another small group of tourists through the museum, and Wendy sauntered over to the counter to lean back and talk to Dipper. "Guys and lodges. You gonna join any lodges when we're all married?"

"Not me," Dipper said, smiling. "I'm gonna stay home with my best girl every night."

"Good answer, man," Wendy said with a grin. "Seriously, though, what's the appeal?"

Dipper shrugged. "I can't really figure it out. But me, I'm not good at networking or working in groups or even at making friends. Dad keeps saying that when I go to college, I should find a good fraternity. He was Theta Tau himself, but man, I just don't like the way guys in groups act, I guess. I mean, the track team's one thing. I even have some friends there. But even with that, they keep ragging on each other—and on me—and some of the jokes can kinda sting."

"Well, who needs frat boys?" Wendy asked. She reached out and tweaked Dipper's pine-tree cap. "Not me. I just need me a lamby."

"Don't even start," Dipper groaned.

"Sorry, Dip," Wendy said with a giggle. "My place for movies tonight? My brothers and dad are gonna be off bowling until at least midnight."

"Sounds good to me," Dipper said. "Want to go get something to eat first?"

"Mm, yeah, I think so. There's that new French restaurant over in Hirschville. Wanna check it out?"

"It's a date."

"Good. We'll leave at quittin' time and go eat, then get back to my place for the formal meeting of the Loyal Order of the Lamby Lambs!"

"I am _not_ wearing a costume," Dipper warned.

She grinned impishly. "Neither am I. _That_ oughta make it fun!"

* * *

At about the same time, Blubs came into the Skull Fracture. No customers were in the place at the moment—lull between the lunch people and the Saturday night revelers—and only Tats and Johnny Beluga, the bartender, were in the place, Beluga reading a racing form, Tats reading Hume's _Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding_. Orville the cook was in the kitchen, sending out aromas of chili, on the menu for dinner after the meeting.

Tats glanced up. "Hey, Sheriff! Way early for the meeting."

Beluga only grunted. He wasn't a Mackerel and didn't want to be and especially resented that one Saturday night each month, the bouncer was upstairs and not down in the bar breaking up fights. Though, come to that, some of the fights were pretty entertaining, so it was probably a wash.

Blubs hitched up his gunbelt and said, "No, I'm here on official business. Now, whose motorcycle is that out front? It's illegally parked, and I really oughta ticket it, but I thought I'd check with you first and see if it belonged to one of your friends or to a big dangerous guy, just to be safe."

"Is it pink?" Tats asked.

Blubs nodded the way he'd seen Jerry Orbach nod on _Law and Order._ "Yes. Yes, it is."

"That's one of the Angles' bikes, then," Tats said. "That wild bunch from Bend, you know. They were in here earlier, but they left around lunch time."

"Well, one of them forgot his ride," Blubs said. "Think I ought to have it towed?"

"Nah," Tats told him. "I'll move it around back to the parking lot. These guys will probably realize they left it behind and come back for it. I wouldn't wanna antagonize a customer."

"Good thinking."

Tats didn't recognize the motorcycle and didn't know which Angle might own it—he didn't socialize with the members of the bikers' club—but with a grunt he picked it up, since it only weighed five hundred pounds, and carried it around to one of the narrow bike slots and left it there.

He went back into the bar and found, to his annoyance, that he'd lost his place in Hume. He frowned, trying to remember where he had broken off. Oh, yeah, there it was: "Contrast or Contrariety is also a connexion among Ideas: But it may, perhaps, be considered as a mixture of Causation and Resemblance. Where two objects are contrary, the one destroys the other; that is, is the cause of its annihilation, and the idea of the annihilation of an object, implies the idea of its former existence."

Tats chuckled as he swiped to the next page of the ebook. Man, Hume _always_ knew how to pace a joke.


	4. Chapter 4

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **4: Call for Help**

 **(August 13, 2016)**

Stan drove over to the Lodge early, arriving around five-twenty. He planned to grab a sandwich before the meeting and supplement that with chili and then snacks as the evening went on, but more important, as the chief assistant to the Supreme Wahoo, he always helped to set up the chairs and inspect the meeting hall. The first rule for meeting halls in the _Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel Handbook_ was "The Mackerel is the cleanest of fish, and the waters where it swims must be immaculately maintained. Before each meeting, pick up litter, sweep and if necessary mop the floor, and make sure things are tidy."

So the tidying up fell to Stan, who really didn't mind it. As he hauled folding chairs out of the storage room and into the Lodge hall, Stan reflected that if he could finagle Soos in as a member, Soos would cheerfully accept some phony-baloney title, like Small Fry of Cleanliness, in exchange for doing all the grunt work.

If his persuasion had worked, they should have at least twenty-five guys at the meeting, but to be safe, he got thirty of the chairs in, six rows of five and well spread out (the seats had to have a comfortable clearance from each other, as Mackerels tended to be wide loads). Then he brought in the Wahoo Throne, which was another folding chair that he set up in the front of the room, behind the Desk of Authority.

That done, and the rows straightened, Stan spread the Banner of Solemnity, a tablecloth embroidered with the Lodge emblem, on the D. of A., which was really a rickety pine card table, and then placed the Gavel of Attention on the Round Wood Block of Gavel Rapping, hung over the Throne the Drape of Office, a heavy blue woven cotton throw to make the folding chair marginally more comfortable in case a Supreme Wahoo suffered from hemorrhoids, and then put out a couple of spare ballpoints in case the Scribers of Scribing that Secretary Woody brought to record the minutes ran dry.

Then, let's see, the water pitcher and glasses. Stan tromped downstairs—a few patrons had come in for beers and sandwiches, but no other Mackerels had showed up yet, because they all knew that Stan might draft them into service if they did, the slackers—and got the Sacred Ewer of Mackereldom from the shelf behind the bar, picked up a couple of probably clean glasses, and stopped for some ice cubes before going back up.

He put the glasses on the table, filled the Ewer at the drinking fountain near the johns, and then couldn't find the Doily of Protection, so he picked up three outdated menus from the early nineties—there were stacks of old menus in the storage room—and put them on the table. He said, "I dub thee temporary Doilies of Protection, so don't let no water rings get on the table, OK?"

He took one last look around, and behold, it was all OK. He walked back into the middle row of the chairs to straighten one up. Then he shivered a little and muttered, "What the hey?"

Experimentally, he huffed out a short breath. Then he want downstairs. "Hey, Tats, talk to you for a minute?"

Tats stood with folded arms in his usual post by the door. They went just outside, where Tats screened the incoming customers to make sure they were neither minors nor miners—that's complicated, one time a bunch of miners came into the Skull Fracture carrying picks, and when they got into a disagreement, the damage was so great that the riled-up ownership banned miners henceforward and forever—anyway, Stan asked, "What's the deal with the hall? You guys put in air-conditioning?"

Tats blinked in evident surprise. "What? Air-conditioning? No! Only commercial places in the Falls with air-conditioning are the mall and the fancy-pants restaurants, you know that."

That was true. Though the Valley had hot spells, sometimes excruciating ones, every summer, few homes and small businesses bothered with air-conditioning. The Shack still didn't have it, though Soos was talking about pricing out a HVAC system come fall. On the other hand, Ford's and Stan's homes had been built with central heating and air because, one, they could afford it, and two, they were married and it seemed a nice touch that their wives would appreciate. Still, Stan and Sheila turned the AC on only when the outside temp climbed up past ninety, which would mean maybe ten or fourteen days out of the whole year.

"Well," Stan said to Tats, "it's damn cold up there. You can see your breath, no kidding. I just noticed it a minute ago while I was setting up."

"Shouldn't be _cold,"_ Tats said. The outside temperature stood at ninety-one, not what anybody would call broiling, but far from cool. "Aw 'ight, let's go check it out."

They went upstairs, Tats in the lead—narrow stairway—and to the Lodge Hall. Stan directed him to the place, and they stood in the middle row of chairs for thirty seconds. Tats was wearing a short-sleeved tee shirt, and he rubbed his biceps. "Huh," Tats said. "Is kinda cool up here, at that."

"Wonder what's causin' that?" Stan said.

Tats shrugged. "Dunno. I'm gonna open the window."

Now, that was ridiculous, opening a window in August to let some warm air in, but Tats went to the back of the room, anyway. The building was an old one, and the sole window, in the side wall at the back and overlooking the parking lot, was the antique double-sash deal, where if you pulled up the lower sash, the top one automatically lowered. It took Tats a little banging, because the window had been painted shut years before, but he finally cracked the seal of dried paint and heaved the window exactly halfway open. "There. I can feel the cool air goin' out through the bottom." He stretched up a hand. "Yeah, warmer air's comin' in the top. Be better in a couple minutes. Why don't you come downstairs and have a beer while we wait for the other guys?"

By then it was a minute or two past six. Stan sat at the bar and had a Rimrock and told Johnny Beluga about how cold the upstairs room was. "Huh," the bartender said, obviously unimpressed. That was his standard response to most questions and statements. He wasn't paid for conversation, after all.

Milt Befufftlefumpter came in, waved from the front door, and joined Stan. "How you doing? I made it this time!" he said.

"Yeah, so I see," Stan told him. "I'm doin' OK, and I'm expectin' about twenty-four, twenty-five tonight. The date thing, the thirteenth deal again, you know."

"Huh," said Johnny.

"Well, I'll go ahead and pay for thirty," Milt said, taking out his wallet. That was the nice thing about Milt, and it was the factor that had made him the leader of the Mackerel school: The paving business was lucrative, and he always provided the refreshments. He handed Johnny Beluga six fifty-dollar bills. "Anybody goes above five beers, it's on them," Milt said. "Use ten of that for snacks, OK? I'll have one of the guys stop and bring them up. Otherwise, keep the tab running and anything left over, put it down for next meeting. And this is for you." He handed Johnny a spare fifty.

"Huh," Johnny said, but he was smiling.

* * *

At that exact moment, Wendy was driving herself and Dipper over to Hirschville, kind of a long way to go for a meal—it was about thirty minutes to _Des Friandeses._ It had opened at the beginning of the summer and so far word of mouth said it was a good restaurant, not great, but good. "This place may be kind expensive, Dip," she warned.

"That's OK," he said. Wendy had changed to a nice outfit, slacks and top, and he had even dressed up a little bit, black trousers instead of jeans, no tie, but a dark gray sports jacket that felt a little too warm on such a hot afternoon. "I've got some cash, and we both got paid today."

"Oh, yeah, make your date pay, real classy, Dip!" Wendy teased.

"Only in an emergency," Dipper said. "That was one thing Grunkle Stan taught me: A gentleman always pays for a lady's meal, preferably after secretly rifling the lady's purse for the dough."

Wendy laughed. "Yep, that's Stan Pines!"

They had hardly left the Valley when Dipper's phone chimed with Stan's ring tone. "Speak of the devil," he said. "Hi, Grunkle Stan. What's up?"

He listened for a few seconds. "Cold spot? How cold? You sure it wasn't just a fluke? Still cold? Well, it could be several things. A difference in humidity can cause one spot in a room to feel cooler than the rest of the room, or it could be convection—cool air sinks, warm air rises—or maybe—what? Um, well, yes, right, that's supposed to be one mark of a ghost. The theory is that ghosts have to pull heat energy from the air in order to manifest, but more often than not a mundane explanation is—No, I'm _not_ trying to sound like Grunkle Ford. Huh? Now? Uh, wait a minute."

He put Stan on hold and said, "Wen, Grunkle Stan wants us to come over to the Skull Fracture right now."

"Why?" Wendy asked. "Does he think he saw a ghost?"

"How did you know—" Dipper chuckled. "You just overheard what I was saying, I'm dumb. Should I tell him we can't come?"

Wendy sighed. "Nah. Stan's been a good friend to me and he's family to you. I guess we owe him, so we'll give up on the escargot for tonight. Maybe we can just grab burgers at Yumberjack's. Think this'll take long?"

"Probably not," Dipper said. "Odds are against it being a ghost, but you know, it's Gravity Falls." He said it the same way the cop in the movie told Jack Nicholson, "Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown."

Then he took Stan off hold. "Hi, Grunkle Stan? We were on our way to dinner, but we'll be there in—" he paused and estimated. "Fifteen or twenty minutes. See you then." He pushed the END button and said to Wendy, "He wants us to get there before seven if we can do it."

"I'll turn around in the Eats 'n Gas lot," Wendy said, nodding at a presumably non-haunted convenience store off to the left of the highway. "I hope this _isn't_ a ghost. I wanted us to have a memorable movie night!"

"We'll probably take care of it in ten minutes," Dipper said confidently. "Then it's burgers and movies."

" _Très élégant_ ," Wendy said.

* * *

And at _that_ moment, Mabel's phone rang. She told Teek, "It's Grunkle Stan. Hi, Grunkle Stan! What's up? Huh? Um, yeah, I think it's up in his room. In the Invisible Wizard's closet. Huh? Couldn't Grunkle Ford take care of this for you? Why, where is he? Oh. Well—" she put the phone against her side and asked Teek, "Do you mind if we run back to the Shack and pick up something for Stan?"

Teek, at the wheel, asked, "What?"

"Some stuff of Dipper's that he wants to borrow. We can do that and then go straight up to Lookout Point."

"Sure," Teek said. "As long as it won't take too long."

"Fifteen minutes, tops," Mabel said, and Teek turned around in Circle Park to head back to the Shack. "OK, Grunkle Stan, we'll be there in a few minutes. See ya!" She hung up.

Teek asked, "What's he want to borrow?"

"Well, Dip has this paranormal activity kit. It's got like anomaly detectors and a book of incantations and, I don't know, anointed water and junk like that. He hardly ever uses it, because every time something weird happens, he's away from home. It's like the stuff Grunkle Ford uses, but he's off in Washington, D.C., this weekend for some meeting with his Agency or some deal. Anyway, Grunkle Stan says he might need Dip's kit at the Skull Fracture."

"We can't get in there!" Teek said. "You have to be twenty-one!"

Mabel shrugged carelessly. "No problem. I'll call Grunkle Stan when we get to the parking lot. He'll get us in. Why'd you stop?"

"Logging truck," Teek said as the overloaded truck sped past, at least ten mph over the speed limit.

"You could have beat it," Mabel said.

"I'm not taking any chances when I've got something important in the car," Teek told her as he made the turn back onto the highway.

"Huh?"

"You," Teek said.

"Aw," she said, grinning, and thinking, _I'm gonna be extra-nice to him up at Lookout Point._


	5. Chapter 5

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 13, 2016)**

 **5: Scene of the Events**

"Whoa!" Wendy said as they came to the Skull Fracture. "Would you look at that!"

"That" was a mob of mostly middle-age to old guys, all in red fezzes, milling about in the late sunshine on the sidewalk in front of the pub. At the edge of the curb sat a folding A-frame sign, the kind that the Skull Fracture sometimes used to advertise happy hour or bargain burgers. Except now somebody had used a gigantic marker to make a sign:

* * *

 **CLOSED FOR PEST INSPECTION**

 **TO SERVE YOU BETTER!**

 **CALL AGAIN SOON!**

* * *

Romping unicorns and cheerful waving winged bunnies decorated the edges of the sign, and Dipper could just about guess who the artist was. Yep, there she stood, in her pink sweater with big red kissy-lips on the front, next to Teek, and carrying—his paranormal investigation kit?

It sure looked like the scratched-up old black faux-leather laptop case that their dad had thrown away and that he had rescued to use in lieu of a briefcase. He rather liked having an investigation kit that looked like it had been through some experiences.

Mabel saw the Dodge Dart at the same instant Dipper saw her, and she waved, yelling, "Hey, Brobro! Hi, Wendy! This is me, Mabel, yelling at you from right here beside the sign! Free parking around back!"

Wendy made the turn, then parked in the usually cramped lot partly behind and partly off to the left of the pub. It was only about half full. "Crazy motorcycle, man," she said, pulling into a slot next to a pink one.

"Probably a girl's," Dipper said, looking at it. "It looks like the color Mabel would get if she were into motorbikes."

They climbed out of the Dodge Dart in time to meet Mabel, who came trotting around the corner. "There's a ghost!" she said excitedly. "Or maybe there is. Some kind of spook, anyway! It's haunting the lodge hall! And Grunkle Stan wants us to exorcize it!" For some reason, she had a coach's whistle hanging by a lanyard around her neck, and she put it to her lips and shrilled it so loud she made Dipper wince. Then she put her hands on her hips and ordered in a drill-instructor tone, "Hey, ghost! Drop and give me twenty, you revolting pile of flabby ectoplasm!"

"Uh—that kind of exercising is different," Dipper said, wiggling a pinky in the ear closest to Mabel and her whistle.

She gave him a flat-hand shoulder punch. "I _know,_ bro of my heart! Come on, laugh it up! It's a Mabel joke! Yuck, yuck!"

"Where'd you get the whistle, dude?" Wendy asked. "It reminds me of Poolcheck's."

Mabel proudly displayed it. "That's 'cause it _is_ Poolcheck's! I borrowed it from him!" She put her hand beside her mouth and whispered, "Grunkle Stan says he had to bully Poolcheck into coming tonight because he's scared of ghosts. Man! He looks even weirder in a lodge fez!"

"There you knuckleheads are," said Stan, coming around the corner with the massive bouncer, Tats, in tow. "Listen, we got ourselves a little problem up in the Holy Mackerel Lodge hall. My genius brother is off in Washington—oh, yeah, I told ya already. Anyway, normally I'd ask him, but since he ain't handy, Dip, would you go up and do your thing and see if it's really a ghost and if it is, banish it? Be great if it's nothing but plumbing or some deal, 'cause I got money on it."

Tats, his muscular arms crossed, rumbled, "Empirically speakin', I find the prospect of a genuine supernatural event to be of low probability. Then again, man, it _ain't_ mice." He took out a keyring with about fifty keys hanging on it and unlocked the back door. They went in. "That's my room on the right," Tats said. "'Scuse the mess, y'all. Uh, and don't use these here bathrooms if you got an urge. The one upstairs is unisex but cleaner."

Of course that made them all glance through the open door into Tats's room, which wasn't really dirty, though the bed, which was made up, looked as if he'd rested on top of the covers. And there was an unwashed dish and a white coffee cup on the nightstand beside it, but that was about all. Wendy held Dipper's hand and sent him a thought: _Looks better than your room usually does._

— _Well, I get busy. Not always time to put the sheets and covers back in place._

 _Just teasin' you, Dip._

Tats said, "Watch your step. I gotta replace a bulb in the stairwell," and led them up to the second floor. Mabel opened every door in the hall on their way toward the front—"'Cause I'm a snoop," she said when Wendy asked her why—and at the end of the hall, they turned right and entered the sacred grounds of the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel. Stan snapped on the lights, and they looked around from just inside the doorway.

"Oh, man," Mabel complained. "It looks like a schoolroom in a poverty district! I was expecting something more exotic."

"So what do you dudes do in your meetings?" Wendy asked.

"That," said Tats firmly, "is a forbidden secret."

"Yeah," Stan said, "but mainly we have a quick business meeting, take up dues twice a year, sometimes vote to give a charity a donation, and then we drink beer and play cards for the rest of the evening. Ya gonna report me for spilling forbidden secrets, Tats?"

"Naw," Tats said with a shrug. "It's nothin' that nobody can't guess."

"Yeah, 'bout what I thought," Wendy said. "How come Dad's not a member anymore? He used to be."

"He got mad this one time, last year," Stanley said. "He ordered a lager and said what he got wasn't fit for a logger. It's OK. He drops out from time to time, then when we get an opening, he reapplies and comes back."

"Figures," Wendy said. She knew her father's temper probably better than anybody, including her dad.

Dipper had counted chairs. "So there's thirty of you? Sacred number?"

"Huh?" Stan asked. "Oh, nope, that's the number of foldin' chairs we have. We got thirty-three on the roster, but there's always some that don't make any given meeting. And thirty-three's not special, either. If we'd just _buy_ some more, we could have thirty-six or forty members or whatever."

"Why don't you?" Mabel asked. "Then me and Dip could be members!"

"Buyin' chairs comes up every September, durin' our membership drive meeting, but generally the guys vote for more beer instead," Stan said.

"Well, push for it," Mabel suggested.

Dipper had set his laptop bag on the desk. "We're kind of getting off the track," he said, rummaging in it. He pulled out a gunmetal-gray device that looked like the illegitimate child of a Colt .45 automatic, an oversize cell phone, and a tiny set of rabbit-ear antennae that telescoped out of the business end. "This baby should tell us if anything paranormal is going on." He brandished the compact and less powerful version of his Grunkle Ford's anomaly detector.

"What's that, Brobro?" Mabel asked, looking over his shoulder.

"It's a P-detector—" Dipper started.

"Bwah!" Mabel chortled, doubling over. Then, choking, she said, "You'd better start down the hall next to the stairs, Dipster! Next to the _restroom_!"

"P," said Dipper with such preternatural patience that it's a wonder the meter didn't light up and honk klaxon warnings, "meaning 'paranormality.' It's a limited version of Grunkle Ford's anomaly meter. OK, here we go." He switched it on. "Um, everybody else please go stand in the hall so I don't pick up interference."

Teek took Mabel's hand and led her, protesting, out the door, followed by Stan, Tats, and last of all Wendy. Mabel guffawed again and said, " _Members_! Ha!"

"Dude," Wendy said, leaning on the door jamb, "I'm gonna stand guard right here to keep this door from slamming and like trapping you or some junk like that. You be careful!"

"I'm not _challenging_ anything now," Dipper said calmly. "Just sweeping for any disturbance in the reality fields. That shouldn't disturb anything that might be hanging out on the astral plane."

That meant he would have to make a dozen separate sweeps, with Dipper standing near the center of the room, between two rows of folding chairs, and slowly turning a three-sixty while studying the readout screen during each rotation. Then he adjusted the wave/particle detector array and tried again on a different frequency.

On the sixth try, he called out, "Negative for everything up to now, but I just got a flutter in the ApPoRev range. Fairly weak trace, but detectable. I'm pretty certain there's something here, but I'm not sure what. Let me finish out the other wavelengths, though."

"What's an applerev?" Mabel called.

"Short for 'apparitions, poltergeists, and revenants,'" Dipper said. "Covers about ninety per cent of haunting phenomena."

Mabel slapped her forehead and groaned. "Man, you even make _ghosts_ sound nerdy!"

"Shh. Huh." Dipper paused with the antennae pointing toward the back of the room and fiddled with the controls. "Strange. There's a cold spot a couple feet in front of me. Ambient temperature is ninety, but right there in the one spot it's . . . _forty?_ Weird! Not a very big area, though. But that's a huge temp gradient."

"Maybe your thingamajig grades on the curve," Mabel suggested.

Dipper rolled his eyes and finished the scans. "OK, you can come back in. I got positive readings in the sixth, eighth, and eleventh ranges. Well, there's definitely _something_ here. My p-detector—"

"Bwah!" Mabel laughed. "Pee!"

Gritting his teeth, Dipper said, "My _paranormality_ detector isn't as powerful as Grunkle Ford's instruments. His can trace fine gradations of unreality that mine can only suggest are there. But I'd say yes, you've got something unnatural going on here."

"You can say that again," Mabel told him, nudging him with her elbow. "All these old guys in their flat-topped red hats!"

"Can it, pumpkin," Stan said mildly. "That's th' sacred fez you're talking about."

Wendy nudged her. "Dude, straight up, have you been in the Smile Dip?"

"I'll be good," Mabel promised, hunching over and looking guilty.

"OK, you guys hang out in here and now let me go out in the hall and see if I can localize a nexus," Dipper said. "Sis, that means to see if there's a paranormal hot spot, where a ghost might actually manifest."

The vibes in the sixth wavelength seemed somewhat stronger about two-thirds of the way down the hall, near the spot where the storage room opened into the hallway—it had two doors, one into the lodge hall, the other, presumably for loading in stock, into the hall. He tested the inside of the room, really just a small walk-in closet for chair and various junk storage. Nope—the flutter still was more pronounced in the Lodge Hall and in the hallway. And even at that, "Nothing real strong," Dipper reported. "OK, let's go downstairs and I'll check there, just in case the real locus is in the restaurant or something."

They clomped down the narrow stairs, and Stan opened the front door. "Hey guys," he called, "looks like this is gonna take some time. Whyn't you all go over to the Mystery Shack? You can have the meeting in the parlor there. Tyler, tell Soos I said it's OK."

"Or we could go to my house," Bud Gleeful said. "It's right close, yes it is, just a short walk. We'll pick up some snacks and then we can meet in my basement and afterwards have a few brews and watch the game on the flat screen."

They held a quick vote and with only one dissenting voice—Horace Ornrey's—they agreed to that change of venue.

"Thanks, guys," Stan said. "If we can get this taken care of, me and Tats'll be along soon. But you guys go ahead with the business meeting without us."

"Hey, I could just leave y'all the key," Tats suggested. "I trust you. The cook and night bartender have done gone home anyways."

"Sure, go ahead," Stan said, pocketing the one key that Tats took off the ring. "I'll lock up and get this back to you."

"Right now, lock the door behind me," Tats said as he headed out. "Always somebody who don't read the signs." He clicked on the _CLOSED_ neon sign, left, and Stan locked the door.

Teek, a little nervously, said, "Uh, am I wrong, or did your uncle just possibly lock us inside with a ghost?"

Mabel punched his shoulder affectionately. "Oh, come on, bae," she said. "Get real! This is the Mystery Twins you're talking about. What's the worst that could happen?"


	6. Chapter 6

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 13, 2016)**

 **6: Not so Savvy**

Everyone at once yelled at Mabel.

Mabel flinched as Teek shouted, "No!", Wendy growled, "Oh, girl, you didn't!" and Dipper snapped, "Mabel, what's _wrong_ with you?" Stan, for a change, was the quietest, merely moaning, "Oy!"

Trying to force a smile, a blinking Mabel asked, "Uh—was it something I said?"

"Sweetie," Grunkle Stan rumbled, waving the others to silence, "you never say somethin' like you just said when there's a possible spookum hangin' around. Never! Even Soos would know better."

Teek looked miserable. "I didn't mean to yell at you, but Mabel, you're more genre-savvy than that. I'm sorry—"

"Yeah," Wendy said, sounding less angry. In a knowing tone, she added, "Smile Dip, am I right?"

"Maybe a little," Mabel muttered, looking down.

"You _know_ that stuff makes you crazy, Sis," Dipper said, his voice not harsh but reproving—which in a way made Mabel feel a little bit worse than being yelled at.

She mumbled in a low voice, "Sorry, sorry, sorry! I didn't—not much—I mean, it's just that Teek and I were going on a date, and it's been a long day already, and I was tired and needed a little pick-me-up, so one packet is all. I'm so sorry, guys."

"Just don't let it happen again, Pumpkin," Stan said, patting her shoulder. "Come on, everybody, cut her some slack. Are we OK?"

"I guess so," Dipper said reluctantly. "Sorry, Mabel."

Wendy put her arm around Mabel and gave her a friendly little shake. "Come on, it's not that bad. Anybody can make a mistake. But now you're goin' into a sugar crash, right?"

"Yeah, I think I am," Mabel admitted, nodding unhappily. Her goofy mood had gone flat all at once, like a punctured balloon. "Hope I didn't mess things up too bad."

Teek kissed her cheek. "It's all right. Here." He reached to a ceramic container on the nearest table and handed her a sugar packet. "To tide you over and help bring you down."

"Thanks, bae," Mabel said, smiling through a tear or two.

"Just half the packet, though, all right?" said Dipper. "We need level heads here. We don't know what we're up—"

Mabel interrupted: "Relax, Broseph. Sugar is only like one-tenth as _whoa!_ as Smile Dip is." But she didn't eat quite the whole packet. "OK," she said as the sucrose hit her system, giving her a little cushion for her crashing mood. "I'm sorry, everybody. Grunkle Stan, keep the key handy in case we need to hurry out, OK?"

"Yeah, sure, you got it," Stan said. "Come on, let's do this nutso scan or whatever and get the heck out of this place as soon as we can. We don't hafta fight this ghost tonight, but let's see if we can at least prove there's somethin' to fight tomorrow."

"All right," Dipper said, readying his anomaly detector. "Everybody get behind me, and I'll sweep the main room first."

They did, all of them crowding against the front window, where the sizzling neon sign read DESOLC in mirror-fashion red letters.

Dipper had switched on the device. Wendy stood directly behind him, hands on his shoulders. Stan was behind and to his left, Mabel and Teek behind and to his right. Mabel craned to look at what he was doing.

The display screen lit up—a blue background, and big blocky white letters as the readout: READY.

"Here we go," Dipper said. He twiddled a dial, pressed a button, and the large letters blinked out, replaced by smaller ones:

SCANNING SPP PLANE (1) WAIT... The three dots blinked off and then back on, one, two, three, and repeated.

"What's that mean?" Mabel asked. "Spup?"

Her brother muttered, "Spontaneous paranormal phenomena. Barely extra-mundane events, like predictive dreams, serendipitous coincidence, low-level stuff."

The readout changed to show a graph, a low, sinuous sine-wave in white above a green line and below a red one.

"OK," Dipper said. "Just background noise there, nothing really registering. Normal for the area. Plane one's clean. Next."

He went through the first five scans and then paused, taking a deep breath. "Here's the first one that charted upstairs. The ApPoRev plane, level six. Just a second, I need to make a couple of adjustments—ready to go."

Mabel stared. This time the display looked different, not a flat graph but an X-Y axis in a circle, the horizontal X line green, the vertical Y one yellow, background black. Almost instantly a series of five or six small red X's showed up in a loose scatter at the top left quadrant, not very far above the X axis, though. "What's that mean?" Mabel asked.

"It's picking up ghostly emanations. It's not real strong. Top left means an actual phantom of some kind, not just poltergeist or apparition events. Whatever it is, the indication represents something that has a mind."

"OK, and what's _that_ mean?" Mabel asked.

"If it was a poltergeist or apparition, the display would be different, different colors, because they're not conscious. This looks like it is. But if there was a ghost really here in the room with us, the X's would be up toward the top of the screen and flashing. This is more like . . . I don't know, like some lingering traces of a ghost that was here not long ago. Or maybe a whole lot of them from a long time back. This is kinda like the trace I always get in the Mystery Shack front yard."

"Say what?" Stan asked, sounding shocked. "There's like ghosts walkin' on my _lawn_?"

"No, no," Dipper said hastily. "But—well, you remember the zombies?"

"Ya mean the ones that crashed the party and then we hadda _sing_ to 'em?" Stan shuddered. "Yeah, I got kind of a faint recollection!"

"You know what? We ought to have another karaoke night," Mabel said. She could tell the sugar was taking hold.

Dipper went to scan seven and in a preoccupied way, he said, "Well, Grunkle Ford says the Mystery Shack trace happens because back in the big flood that came after the Northwest Mansion was first built in 1862, a bunch of drowned loggers were buried there in unmarked graves."

"Maybe that's why Tripper keeps digging holes," Mabel said. "Bones!"

"Don't eat any more sugar, OK?" Teek whispered to her.

"Wait, wait, wait," Stan said, rubbing his palm over his forehead. "Ya tellin' me this joint here was built on like, I dunno, an Indian graveyard?"

"No," Dipper said. "Uh—was it?"

"How should I know? Never heard that, though. Come to think of it, Ford told me one time that the Chinooks didn't ever bury their dead in the Valley, but took 'em out a few miles away."

"Yeah, probably didn't want 'em comin' back," Wendy said. "Dad says that there's at least one spot where if you bury somethin' dead, it'll come back to life, but it won't be normal."

"In this town, who can tell the difference between normal and nuts?" growled Stan. "How's it comin', Dip?"

"Almost done. Got a very faint blip in the eighth range—that detects active disembodied intelligences and invisible creatures, stuff like that. Nothing in nine and ten. Now eleven—that's the malevolence plane. If there's anything evil—holy cow!"

Mabel frowned. Now the readout was like a color bar. It started out black at the bottom then shaded to blue, green, yellow, orange, and red at the top. It pulsed right up to the lower edge of the red hue and hung there quivering. "What's that? Bad?"

"Yeah," Dipper said. "It means that whatever is leaving traces here is not our friend."

"Aw," Mabel said. "Maybe it needs a hug."

"Genre savvy, genre savvy," Teek repeated, like a protective spell.

Dipper took a deep breath. "OK, I need to go and scan the other rooms on this floor. No basement here, right? Didn't think so. You guys stay back and listen, and if I need help, I'll yell—you stay here, too, Wendy."

She had taken a step with him. "No way, man. I'm not lettin' you go back there when something evil may be waiting to pounce! Hey, just a minute."

They had reached the end of the bar. Wendy detoured and went to the wall, where a fire extinguisher hung in a little glass cabinet. A fire extinguisher, plus a fire axe. "They don't make these things anymore," she said, cheerfully elbowing the glass, shattering it into tinkling fragments. "Hey, Stan, you'll have to pay for this!"

"Sheesh!" Stan said. "Come on, I _got_ the key! I coulda _unlocked_ it!"

"More fun this way." Wendy grabbed the axe and hefted it. "Huh. Third-rate, but I guess it'll do in a pinch."

Mabel called, "Didn't you bring your own axe?"

"To go on a date with Dipper?" Wendy asked. "Nah, not needed. He's gotta fight _me_ off, not vice-versa!"

"Atta boy!" Stan yelled.

"You guys!" Dipper complained, blushing. "OK, Wen, come with me then, but be real careful and stay behind me."

"You got it," Wendy said.

Teek, Mabel, and Stan came close to the hallway but stayed in the main bar room. Stan complained, "This is takin' forever!"

"All right," Dipper said. "To save time, I'm gonna concentrate on ranges six, eight, and eleven, since so far those have been the only spikes in the readings. Here we go."

The hallway was marginally more active in range six, but about the same as the second floor in eight and eleven. Dipper shook his head. "This must be an intermittently manifesting apparition," he said. "That means it only shows up sometimes. I don't know. Maybe it _is_ strong background resonance from somebody who died a hundred years or so."

The small kitchen and storage rooms were about the same. Tats's room, ditto, though there the malevolence reading was down in the yellow range. "What causes that?" Wendy asked.

Guessing, Dipper said, "Well, Tats can be kinda violent if somebody gets unruly, but really he's kinda laid-back. I think maybe his personality may damp down the malevolence reading some." He stopped right outside the ladies' room. "Uh—"

"Oh, come on," Wendy said, opening the door and nudging him. "It's not much different from a men's room, 'cept they don't have those things hangin' on the wall—oh, my God. Yuck!"

To say that the restroom could use a scrubbing is like observing that the Phantom of the Opera really should have dusted the sewers of Paris at least every other year. The floor was nastily, suggestively, unpleasantly sticky. Two toilets crouched in adjoining stalls, and one could only surmise that sixty years earlier, both had started out white. Now they were, well, not-white. "Man," Wendy grumbled, "why don't they _clean_ this place?"

Dipper was still getting over his culture shock at being in a women's room. With a woman. "Uh, I, I don't know."

"I mean, the Mystery Shack johns are way better than this!" Wendy said. "Even back when they were always clogged or broke and Stan had the portable john out back—"

"I'm hearin' this!" Stan called from the hallway.

Wendy yelled, "Well, it's true! Me and Soos—well, mainly Soos— _did_ scrub the toilets now an' then! And now Soos has upgraded them so they're nice—"

"Yeah, yeah, Soos is a hard worker, point taken! Anything, Dip?"

"About the same on all three readings," Dipper said.

"Brace yourself, kid!" Stan yelled. "The guys' can's always worse than the women's!"

"How _could_ it be?" Wendy asked. But then they went in, turned on the forty-watt bulb, and saw. "Oh, _gross_!" she groaned. "Look at the floor! Can't guys even _aim_? Gah, the ammonia's burnin' my eyes!"

Stan sounded defensive: "Wendy, sometimes it's hard to hit the target when you're emptyin' out a couple-three pints of beer!"

"The commode's not even in a _stall_! It's just sittin' here against the wall in the open. Oh, my God, look at the graffiti! That's _obscene_ , man!"

Dipper was staring at the anomaly detector display. Tensely, he said, "Go! Let's get out of here _now_!"

They retreated into the hall. Mabel was pinching her nose. "Shut the door! That's air pollution!"

"What—what's that light?" Teek asked nervously. Dipper had switched off the one dim bulb as he and Wendy left the toilet, but an ominous green flicker came and went, came and went, inside the men's room.

"Something," Dipper said hoarsely, "that wants to get out."

Wendy tried to slam the door. It shut—almost—and stuck, ajar by about two inches. "Is it catchin' on something?" she asked, shoving against something that seemed spongy.

"Leave it alone," Dipper said. "Get back! Grunkle Stan, better go unlock the front—"

The men's room door banged open so hard it slammed into the wall.

Something awful surged from the toilet.


	7. Chapter 7

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 13, 2016)**

 **7: Now You See It . . .**

Wendy gripped the fire axe and elbowed Dipper back. "Get to the door, man! I'll hold it off!"

Dipper grabbed her arm. — _You CAN'T hold it off with an axe! It's not solid!_

 _Good point—hurry, it's gaining on us!_

They backed through the bar, bumping into chairs and tables. Behind them, Dipper could hear Stan fumbling at the lock, growling, "Come on, come on, come on, this hasta be the right key!"

Someone—probably Teek—threw a chair past Wendy and Dipper. The entity drifting toward them, though, was more a fog than a solid thing—a glowing blue-green amorphous vapor. It sent out tendrils as if trying to find them. The chair sailed right through it with no visible effect, knocking over one of the round tables with a crash. The glowing shape was fifteen feet away—ten—five—

The door clicked. "Got it!" Stan said. "Everybody out!"

Wendy grabbed Dipper and dragged him. As soon as they reached the sidewalk, Stan slammed and locked the glass door a moment before the—ghost, whatever it was—oozed up against it. It percolated there, but didn't seem to be able to pass through the cracks around the barrier.

"Maybe it can't leave the Skull Fracture," Dipper said. He pointed the detector at it. "Yeah, it's either a ghost or an intelligent paranormal entity, and it's really mean. Look at this!"

He showed them the "Malevolence" chart. The rainbow thermometer topped out and was pulsating red—in fact, red now covered more than half the column. And zone 8 showed the upper left quadrant full of rapidly flickering scarlet X's. Like crammed full, with no room for anything else.

"I think it's fading," Mabel said.

"Yeah, I'm losing the contact, too," Dipper added, staring at the display. "There it goes."

"Boosh!" Wendy said, relief in the word.

"Is it really gone?" Teek asked.

"Um, if you mean 'for good,' then I'm pretty sure the answer is no," Dipper told him. "But it's turned, I guess, dormant?"

"What made it come after _us_?" Mabel asked. "And why was it in that stinky old bathroom?"

"First, I don't know," Dipper said. "Second, I also don't know."

"Maybe it's got no sense of smell," Wendy suggested.

"Maybe," Dipper agreed. "Paranormal entities are tricky. Some of them perceive reality completely differently from humans, using senses we can't even imagine. Some seem to be able to see and hear and all, though, like normal living people. You know, one example is Marley's Ghost. Dickens said it had wide staring eyes that never looked directly at anything or seemed to focus, but it could see every—"

"Sheesh, give it a rest, Poindexter Junior!" Stan said. "Bottom line: Is it safe to go in there?"

"No!" Wendy exclaimed.

"I agree with Wendy," Dipper said. "Not safe right now, anyway. It might have focused on us—I mean, it could recognize us again, possibly. And for some reason, it hates us. I don't know if that's personal, or if it just hates all living people. But no, until we can deal with this thing, until we exorcize it—Mabel!"

Mabel dropped the whistle from her lips. "Sorry, sorry, got carried away."

Stan grimaced. "For the love of—I'm glad I don't need my hearing aid no more. You woulda blown the battery! Why don't you run back inside and blow that whistle at the ghost? That'd probably make him dissolve or run back to hell or whatever. Don't tell Sheila I said 'hell,' OK?"

"Damn straight," Mabel said.

"No more sugar for you tonight, Sis," Dipper told her. "OK, OK. This is something I'm not sure we can deal with on our own. We need Ford. Uh—are you calling him?"

"Me?" Stan, who had his phone to his ear. "Naw, I'm callin'—Tats! Stan here. Yeah, kind of. So listen, the good news is that we definitely proved you got a ghost. Bad news is that it might kill anybody who steps into the Skull Fracture. No, hear me out, I want you to come and stay with me and Sheila tonight, we got a guest room—for cryin' out loud, no! _Don't_ pack a bag, don't go into the place! OK, then run by the Sprawl-Mart and buy yourself a change of clothes and a toothbrush and so on. Listen, you call Cookie and Johnny and tell them not to come in to work tomorrow, get it? Yeah, we're gonna dope out some way of banishing this thing, but we need time. Hey, put Tyler on."

"Grunkle Stan," Dipper said, "I'm telling you, this thing is too weird for me."

Stan waved him off. "Hello, Mr. Mayor! Listen, there's somethin' bad loose in the Skull Fracture. Yeah, like that. Don't tell me to never mind it! Listen, I can't do this myself, but you can. Call Digges and tell him that as Mayor you're temporarily shutting the place down. Temporary, I said! Yeah, he'll listen, 'cause you're the Mayor, remember? I dunno, gas leak or some deal, you think of somethin'. OK, here's what we'll tell everybody else: The place is closed for renovation. Yeah, of _course_ when it reopens, somethin'll have to be different! I'll tell ya what—we're gonna get somebody to clean and fix up both bathrooms! Yeah, and then Digges won't have to pay off the Board of Health no more. Don't kid me, I know he does. OK, Tyler, but call him right now. And tell him not to come in for some inspection or something! _Nobody_ goes in until you get the word from me, understand? Yeah, yeah, refer 'em to me, I'll take the heat."

He hung up and shook his head. "Everybody goes nuts. Listen, Mabel, could you like make another sign to put up here? Somethin' about renovating?"

"I'm on it!" Mabel said, reaching into her sweater and whipping out a red permanent marker, extra-large. "Let me do my thing!"

"Dude," Wendy asked Stan, "are you really gonna get somebody to swamp out those toilets? They're disgusting!"

Stan nodded. "Yeah, my genius brother can probably get a couple of his Agency guys to put on hazmat suits and do it. Come to think of it, I still got one of them suits in the attic closet of the Shack, if you'd like to make a little extra—"

"Stan," Wendy said, "I like and respect you, but remember, I'm holding a fire axe."

"Soos would do it," Stan said. He scratched his nose. "But, nah, he's got a couple kids now—"

"This is premature," Dipper said. "First we have to get rid of the entity!"

"Right. Call my brother," Stan said, his shoulders slumping.

"But he's at his conference—" Dipper began.

"Kid, he's runnin' the damn Agency! Don't tell Sheila I said 'damn'."

"Hell, no," said Mabel, who had turned her first sign around and was kneeling on the sidewalk, busy with some really impressive calligraphy.

" _Anyways_ ," Stan said, rolling his eyes, "Ford answers to nobody, as I understand it. And this kinda thing is what he lives for. So get him on the horn and see how soon he can be back."

As Mabel hummed and printed, Dipper called Ford's number and waited, expecting it to go to voicemail. However—

"Mason!" Ford said. "What's wrong?"

"Grunkle Ford, we—wait, what?" Dipper blinked. "How did you know something was wrong?"

"Simple deduction," Ford said. "As a general rule, you would not disturb me when you knew I was somewhere on official business. Ergo, since you're now calling me, the need must be urgent. Knowing Gravity Falls, I suspect it's some intrusion of the paranormal. So—what's wrong?"

Dipper took a deep breath. "You're right. I think we got a ghost," he said, and he explained everything. Ford murmured occasional encouragements, but held his questions. Dipper finished with, "It looked like a cloud of glowing greeny-blue gas? I guess. It moved fairly fast, but deliberately, and it kept sending out these wisps like it was feeling for us."

"Interesting," Ford said. "Very cogent observations, Mason, good work. Your account suggests a high-level malevolent ghost, perhaps one that has evolved from being a garden-variety human spirit into something much more dangerous. All right. First, let no one go inside that establishment. No one!"

"We've got that covered," Dipper said.

"Good. On this end, fortunately, we've finished with the main portion of the Agency's meeting. I'll be able to duck out and return to Gravity Falls by tomorrow morning. Deputy Powers can take over for me and finish the business reports and give the January-to-June action summaries, that's all just routine. Hold on a second, I'm using my laptop . . . mm . . . seats available? Yes, there we go. Very well, Lorena and I will land in Portland tomorrow morning at eleven West Coast time, TransContinental Flight 618. Could someone meet us? Agent Trigger drove us over, but he should remain here for the reports."

"Just a second." Dipper asked Stanley.

"Yeah, yeah, tell Brainiac I'll pick 'em up tomorrow at eleven," Stan said.

Dipper relayed the word and then asked, "What are we going to do?"

" _You_ should do nothing except to secure the building," Ford said. "I'd have some Agents lend a hand, but this is one of the two big conferences and most of the field personnel are tied up here. Take care of sealing the premises and then stay away. After I've done some analyses, I'll determine what approach to use to banish the entity. Dipper—be exceptionally careful and keep an eye on Stanley. My brother can sometimes act incautiously."

"Right," Dipper said.

As soon as he'd put his phone away, Mabel held up her handiwork. "Ta-da! What do you think?"

"Mabes," Wendy said, "it's a work of art!"

The poster that she had created was very . . . decorative. Chubby, big-eyed kittens pranced all around the lettering:

* * *

 **TO SERVE MEW BETTER!**

 **THE SKULL FRACTURE IS TEMPORARILY**

 **CLOSED**

 **FOR A GRAND REFURBISHING!**

 **WATCH FOR OUR SPECIAL RE-OPENING**

 **WITH A PURR-FECT FIRST-DAY SALE!**

* * *

"Old man Digges ain't gonna love that last bit," Stan said. "Ah, but he gouges on the price of beer anyways, and we're gonna fix the johns for free, so screw him. Uh, maybe you better not mention to Sheila that I said 'screw'—"

"Fu—" began Mabel, but Teek clapped a hand over her mouth. "We get the idea," he assured her. Then he squirmed. "Are you licking my _palm_?"

"You like it?" Mabel asked flirtatiously as soon as he took his hand away.

Teek looked uncomfortably puzzled. "Uh—well, in a weird way, yeah. Kinda."

"More where that came from!" Mabel said brightly.

Wendy shook her head. "TMI, Mabes! Get the sign up and let's scram outa here. This place is giving off creepy vibes."

Mabel taped the sign to the stand. Then she and Teek took off for their date—it was getting on toward eight P.M. and as she said, "Time's a-wasting!"

Stanley muttered, "OK, one more thing to do, and I hate to do it, but—" he called a number. "Sheriff? Yeah, you were right about the thirteenth an' all. Yeah, yeah, I owe you four dozen donuts! Listen—yeah, you _know_ I'm good for it! Listen, I—One glazed, one lemon-filled, one chocolate frosted with sprinkles, one cake, got it, got it. Listen, Daryl, I want you and Durland to come to the Fracture right now, and—I don't _care_ if the game's on TV! OK, whatever you do when you close a business, bring the stuff. We gotta secure the building. Yeah, chains and padlocks, fine, whatever. Just come right now!" He looked up toward the sky and counted to ten. Then he said, "Just as soon as the place is secured, I will go to the bakery and get your donuts. It closes at nine, so get your butts here pronto!" He thumbed the END button and muttered, "Oy, vey!" But he added, "You kids go on. I'll stay here and hold the fort until Blubs and Durland show up."

Dipper glanced at Wendy. "Uh, no, we'll stay," he said. "I don't think any of us should be alone here. Right, Wendy?"

"Right," she said. "Stan, we've seen enough horror movies to know the rule. Don't split up the party."

"Call this a party?" grumped Stan.

However, Blubs and Durland showed up in fifteen minutes, and in another ten they had chained and padlocked both front and back doors of the Skull Fracture. Blubs read Mabel's sign for Durland—though in the past few years the deputy had learned to read for himself, at least to the level of the newspaper comics—and Durland said, "That'll be nice! Reckon the beers will have them little umbrellas in them?"

"I wouldn't be surprised," Stan said. "You guys goin' back to Bud's?"

"There's still beers left!" Blubs said.

"All right, I'll get my car, pick up your four dozen donuts, and drive over there. See you there."

In the parking lot, Stan climbed into his El Diablo, rolled down the window, and said, "I wanna see you two kids drive off before I leave. Don't split the party, right?"

"Right," Dipper said.

He and Wendy headed toward her Dodge Dart. She turned before opening the driver's door and held up the fire axe. "Hey, Stan! Tell Tats that I'll hang onto this and return it when the place is safe to enter again."

"Yeah, yeah," Stan called back. Both he and Wendy started their engines, and both cars nosed out of the lot.

Dipper checked the time on his phone. "Eleven minutes past eight," he said. "Yumberjack's?"

"I guess. Then my house?"

"Sure," Dipper said.

They pulled through the drive-up lane and picked up a couple of Yumburger Deluxes and a single order of fries, no drinks. Then Wendy headed for her house.

On the winding road past the turn-off to the Shack, she muttered, "Man, the guy behind us is in a hurry!"

Dipper, sitting in the passenger seat with the bag of warm burgers on his lap, turned around and looked back. It wasn't fully dark, but the trees lining this part of the highway cast a deep, gloomy shadow. Through the rear window he saw a single headlight, closing fast.

Then it blatted past them, passing on a curve with an unnerving roar, and the red tail light glared and faded in the distance. Dipper said, "Was that—"

"A motorcycle," Wendy said. "With some idiot in the saddle."

"Did you see the driver?" Dipper asked.

"No, couldn't take my eyes off this curve. Why?"

Dipper swallowed. "I'm not sure, but I think the motorcycle was pink. And nobody was riding it."


	8. Chapter 8

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 13, 2016)**

 **8: . . .Now You Don't**

The Yumburgers were, meh, OK, not real high on the yumminess index. As usual, the fries were pretty good, especially when briefly crisped in the oven. Dipper and Wendy munched their way through their not-so-romantic dinner. The only French cuisine in sight were the fries, and as Dipper observed, the French didn't invent them, even.

"No kidding?" Wendy asked, holding a french-fried potato between thumb and index finger. "Where'd they come from, then?"

"Belgium," Dipper said, reaching for the ketchup. He bit into his burger and chewed for a few seconds, then gulped. "See, in World War I, the American troops met up with Belgians. As the story goes, the Belgian peasants loved fried fish, but when the fish got scarce in the winter, they sliced up potatoes and fried them in the same way instead. When the American soldiers tasted the potatoes and liked them, the Belgians told them they were _frites_ —fries, a French word. So the Americans figured they were French and when they came back home, they taught the recipe to everyone and called them French-fried potatoes."

"Huh. 'Want some of my Belgians?' Sounds dorky. Probably just as well," Wendy said.

The teens ate at the Corduroy table, but with an absolute minimum of mess. When they finished, they had to wash two glasses and—well, wipe down the table and toss the trash, that was it. Movie night seemed more attractive than cleaning up after themselves.

"Time is it?" Dipper asked, switching on the TV.

"Five 'til nine," Wendy called to him from her room. "We can just catch Creature Feature on 14."

"Where's the remote?"

"Look under the sofa cushions."

"Got it." He clicked to channel 14 and then lounged back on the sofa. The bearded, hyper-enthusiastic Bobby Renzobbi was hawking something called the Frog Bog, a plastic habitat for newts, salamanders, toads, frogs, mudpuppies, cyrptobranches . . ..

"Who even _needs_ one?" Dipper wondered out loud.

Then Wendy returned. She had changed clothes from her French-Restaurant dressy casual to short cut-off jeans and a green tee shirt. She was barefoot. "Shove over, Dip," she said cheerfully. "Give a girl a place to sit."

Dipper scooched over and Wendy plopped down beside him and stretched out her long legs. "Well, I always give Dad a fudge factor of an hour and a half, so he and the boys might be back anytime between eleven and two. I guess we just watch the movie. We don't have enough safe time to get into anything real interesting!"

As the commercial ended and the "Coming Up Next: Creature Feature!" title card came up, Dipper put his arm around her and nuzzled her hair. "Mm. I don't know that we really need more than two hours."

She shoved him playfully. "Nope! Not gonna happen. This is gonna be done right when we get around to it. Darn it, every time I stock up on scented candles, body wash, and massage oil, something comes along and screws up my plans. Maybe next time."

"But my regiment may be called up at any moment!" Dipper said in a pretty bad imitation of an old-time movie star like maybe Ronald Colman. "Dearest, would you send a soldier into hell without giving him a taste of heaven?"

Wendy shrugged. "Dunno, let's see how bad the movie is. I may get bored and you may get lucky."

Another short commercial rolled, and then an off-screen announcer, trying hard to sound like Boris Karloff and succeeding in sounding more like Don Knotts, read the intro: "In England, the foggy bogs of Dartmoor have seen some strange and supernatural sights, but none stranger or, um, supernaturaler—Dave, that can't be right! What? Calm down, who watches this crap anyhow—where was I? Stranger or _more supernatural_ than _The Killer Will o' the Wisps!"_ The canned music went _dun-da-DUNNH_!

"Haven't seen this one," Dipper said.

"Aw, black and white!" Wendy complained, imitating Mabel.

"Black and white has its own aesthetic," Dipper assured her, and she turned and nipped his ear between her upper teeth and lower lip. "Ow!"

On TV, a black screen faded into semi-visibility, dark gray, showing a misty, dim landscape of low rounded hills. Artificial-looking fog drifted by. Dipper thought to Wendy, — _They're not even using a fog machine. That's a strip of film with splotches just printed on it rolling across the camera lens._

The movie music had snuck in—skittery, wavering flutes and lugubrious oboes dominating—and the white title fluttered into view in ragged-looking letters:

* * *

 ** _The Killer Will o' the Wisps_**

* * *

Then the credits:

* * *

 **Starring**

Ralph Chomondeley-Ffthafter

Verona Desiree

Sir Marcus Minchen

Anna Naan

 **Adapted from the novel**

 _Hard Cheese in Devonshire,_ by Ernest Wriothseley

 **Screenplay by**

Marietta Ingenue-Creekley

 **Music by**

Harmon Izinger

Performed by the Lower Upper Framptonshire Symphony Orchestra

 **Produced and Directed by Albert Hatchplot**

Wembly-Frobish Motion Pictures, Ltd.

Copyright MCMXLVII

* * *

"Why don't they use real numbers? Wendy asked.

Dipper leaned his head against hers. "Dunno. Maybe Roman numerals are hard to read and they extend the shelf life of the movie?"

"Shh."

On screen a British train, puffing smoke and tooting a shrill whistle, pulled into what looked like a small country station in the middle of the night. A trim man in a soft wool hat and trench coat stepped off the train onto the platform, then turned and accepted two suitcases, all straps and buckles, from an elderly railroad attendant. The traveler set the suitcases down, put a pipe—somehow already lit—between his teeth and with a puff said, "So this is Weerdley Common, is it? Not much to look at."

"Blimey, sir," said the corpulent railway man, consulting a pocket watch, "Not much to look at, as may be, but you can take my word for it, sir, there's plenty to _scream_ at. Good night to you, sir, and saints preserve you!"

The train pulled out with a hiss and billow of steam, the traveler hunched his shoulders, looked around, and muttered, "What a dismal place! Well, this is a fine beginning to a fellow's precious two weeks' holiday!" He puffed his pipe again.

The music did an eerie sting, and the camera pulled back to show that another dark, shadowy figure, completely out of focus, stood in the gloom watching the man. It stepped forward and revealed itself as a woman in a long tweed coat and wearing a kind of Robin Hood hat with a bobbing, curved pheasant feather. She trilled out, "Oh, Inspector Doughty? Is that you?"

With his suitcases in hand, the traveler said, "Well! This is more like it!" He dropped one bag to tip his hat. "Hullo, mum, yes, I'm Reginald Doughty of Scotland Yard. And who, pray, are you?"

"Welcome to Dartmoor, Inspector! I'm Millicent Nibbley-Doowell," she said. "I was your late brother's secretary."

Wendy whispered, "Betcha ten bucks she's a bad guy."

"No bet," Dipper said.

The movie began. The first thirty minutes were pretty much a snooze, not much happening—Millicent ("Call me Milly") bundled Reginald ("Call me Reggie, everyone does") into a car and they got in and pretended to drive to Doughty Manor. Since it was night, the movie director didn't even bother with back projection. Milly just sat at the wheel and twiddled it aimlessly as they talked exposition.

Then, after the third commercial, the plot finally woke up, found its slippers, made some coffee, drank it, scratched its butt, and ambled into the movie. An elderly shepherd with a scruffy beard and an unlikely mustache ("Call the zoo and see if they're missing a walrus," Wendy said) roamed the hills and coombes—whatever they were—looking for a lost ewe in the middle of a fake-foggy night. Leaning on a staff, he wandered around—"Dude," Wendy said, "you passed that same rock three times now!"—until flickers of white light played over his craggy old face and squinting, he muttered to himself, "Wazzit? Summat white, innit? Oy! Izzat you, Lucy? Who's a naughty sheep, then? Coom! Coom to me! Don't 'ang aboot! Wait—no, no! _Arrrggghhh_!"

And whatever got him did not put in a personal appearance as he sank, screaming, out of the frame. However, the soundtrack had gobbling sounds, as if they'd recorded a pit bull slurping up a bowl of chopped raw liver. "Dumb," Dipper said. "Will o' the wisps don't _attack_ you."

"You know what does, though?" Wendy asked seriously.

He glanced at her, surprised. "What?"

"Girls! _Wauggh_!" She pounced on him and they wrestled off the couch and onto the floor, laughing like loons. On the TV, a woman servant from the Manor happened across a bundle of rags lying on the ground—it was morning now—and she nudged it with her foot while talking to herself.

"Funny. 'Ere somebody's gone an' dropped a good wool cloak wot looks like old Shapton's, the crazy shepherd. 'Old on, summat's under it. Let's 'ave a look. Lawks! _Eeee!_ Help! _Help_!"

Wendy had Dipper pinned, and he joined in, laughing "Help! Help!"

Suddenly Wendy stopped just as she was about to collect a kiss. "Geeze Louise!" she said. "I hear Dad's truck! I'm gonna be in the bathroom—tuck in your shirt, quick!" She jumped up and dashed.

Dipper took care of the shirt and then hopped onto the sofa and leaned back. The door banged open, and Dan yelled, "Wendy!"

Dipper looked around. "Oh, hi, Mr. Corduroy, she's in the bath—"

"In the can, dad!" yelled Wendy. "Be there in a second." The toilet flushed, and then Wendy, wearing her green plaid flannel shirt over the tee—and her shoes, Dipper noticed—came in. "You guys're sure home early!"

Dan and the twins had all piled in, the two boys shoving at each other and quarreling in the did-too-did-not way of mid-teen siblings, until their dad bellowed, "Quiet!" He opened his bowling bag and took out two halves of a ball. "Look here, I busted another'n. They don't make these things right! What are you two up to?"

Wendy gestured to the TV. "Watchin' a horror flick. It's not that great, though."

"OK. I won't bother you none."

But of course . . . he did, just by being there. When the movie ended at ten-thirty, Wendy said, "Hey, Dad, I'm gonna run Dipper back home, OK?"

"Take the truck," Dan said from the armchair. "I parked in behind you. Wait a minute." He reached in his pocket for his wallet and pulled out a green credit card. "Here, you don't mind, stop at Wildas Gas and fill it up. Regular, not premium!"

"I know, Dad," she said with a sigh. "Keys?"

"You go put on some britches!" Dan said as he handed the keyring over. "Ain't right to go round showing off your legs thataway!"

"Who's gonna see me _this_ time of the night?" Wendy asked, but she told Dipper, "Be right back" and went to her room.

As soon as she was gone, Dan leaned toward Dipper and rumbled a question: "You two behaving yourselves?"

Dipper looked him in the eye. "Sir, you don't have to worry about it. We're not, um, misbehaving."

"Ha! I like your moxie," Dan growled, and Dipper realized where Wendy had picked up the strange phrase. Though he sounded more cautionary than threatening, Dan added, "You just remember now, no serious stuff until you're older!"

"I'm nearly seventeen," Dipper pointed out. "But don't worry. We promised each other."

"Good man."

"C'mon, Dip," Wendy said, breezing in, now wearing jeans and boots. "You and Dad can plan out my love life later."

"Baby girl—" Dan began.

Wendy cut him off. "Later, Dad. Be half an hour or so."

They got into Dan's pickup, Wendy started it, and with great skill she backed it out of the drive. "Sorry about this, Dip," she mumbled, sounding ticked-off. "I really did want us to have a romantic evening together."

"It's OK," Dipper said. "Maybe tomorrow?"

"You're probably gonna be busy helping Ford," Wendy said. "Tell you what: I'll come over in the afternoon and help or whatever and after, maybe we can squeeze in some alone time. Deal?"

"Deal," he said. After a second, he said, "You know, when we were wrestling, I was letting you win."

"Yeah, yeah, tell another one," Wendy shot back, but she was giggling.

* * *

Up on Lookout Point, Mabel and Teek broke their kiss and Mabel murmured, "This has been so nice!"

"Yeah . . . ." agreed Teek in a dazed and dreamy voice.

"But it's nearly eleven now, and you'd better take me back. Let's do this again tomorrow."

"That's a date!" Teek said, starting his car.

Mabel's clothing was a bit disarranged. She squirmed to adjust it. "Probably we'll have to get together late tomorrow afternoon," she said. "I know Dipper's gonna need me for this ghost thing. Between you and me, he wouldn't be able to do anything without me there to help."

"OK," Teek said. "I'll come over to the Shack around, oh—what, one o'clock? And we can go downtown together."

"Great!" Mabel said happily.

The highway down from Lookout Point was a convoluted series of sharp hair-pin turns, and Teek had to take it slow. But then, when they were nearly all the way down to the route back into town, Teek had to pull the car sharply to the right as a roaring motorbike blasted past. "Man! That jerk must be turnt!"

"Did you see that?" Mabel asked in a shaky voice.

"Yeah, biker nearly ran us off the road—what is it?"

"Teek," Mabel said, "first, where did it _come_ from? This road ends at the Point, and no bike was up there! But worse, didn't you notice? No one was riding that motorcycle!"


	9. Chapter 9

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 13, 2016)**

 **9: On a Lonely Road**

Wendy hastily swung the pickup over onto the shoulder of the highway just before reaching the Mystery Shack drive. "What the heck?"

Dipper turned around in time to see headlights looming and then the silver flash as Teek's car made a skidding turn into the driveway, kicking up a cloud of dust. "Something's wrong!" he said.

They followed the silver Focus up into the lot and saw Teek and Mabel scramble up onto the gift-shop porch, Mabel frantically beckoning them to hurry, hurry, hurry. Wendy parked, went back and popped the long toolbox open, and took out an axe—the one that Dipper had arranged to have silver-edged for her—and then she and Dipper ran to the Shack. "What's up?" Dipper asked.

Mabel grabbed him. "Oh, my gosh, Brobro, it's like the headless horseman, only it's like an invisible motorcycle guy, not even wearing a helmet, and it chased us down that curvy road from Lookout Point and then chased us again and didn't peel off until we turned toward town and it's pink and fast and there's nobody riding it!"

"I think I got most of that," Dipper said. "You're not crazy, we saw it too—came up behind, passed so close it made us swerve—"

"Right," Teek said. "Same thing with us. But then Mabel said we'd be safe here because the unicorn-hair barrier still works, so I was driving, but she stepped over on my foot and pushed it down on the accelerator. I know we were going way too fast—"

"Just fast enough!" Mabel insisted. "We got away, anyhow!"

"It's the ghost, Mabes," Wendy said. "Has to be. This afternoon we saw that bike, or one just like it, parked in the Skull Fracture lot. Something must've got outa the pub and stole the bike—or animated it or some deal, Dipper would know."

"Possession, possession," Dipper muttered. "Yeah, sometimes there've been reports of poltergeist-type ghosts possessing an inanimate object. I never heard of a haunted motorbike, but there was the Phantom Coach of Coventry—"

"Dipper! It's not just a magicked motorcycle! Somebody invisible must be riding it, and it's gotta be a girl ghost!" Mabel blurted.

"I . . . don't follow," Dipper said.

She grabbed and shook him. "Da-doy! It was _pink_!"

"Mabel," Dipper said, breaking away from her, "calm down. OK, maybe some spirit is riding the bike, but it's a _ghost!_ It doesn't have sex!"

"Gender," Teek corrected apologetically.

"Look," Dipper said, "I think we're safe here—like you say, the unicorn-hair protective field is still in place. And there's also one around your house, Wendy, and Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan protected their houses—"

Mabel grabbed Teek's shirt front and shook him the same way she'd been shaking Dipper. "You gotta stay over here tonight!" she said. "It's the only way! The only way!"

"Guess I'd better hurry home," Wendy said.

"Not alone!" Dipper insisted, grabbing her wrist. "Uh, look, call your dad and arrange to stay over here tonight. You and Mabel can share the guest room, and Teek can bunk upstairs in the spare attic bed."

"Yeah, go ahead and spoil everything," Mabel mumbled. "I could make up a better arrangement in my dreams!"

Wendy didn't respond to her, but looked uncomfortable. "Well—don't know if Dad will go for this, after he came home early—"

Mabel let go of Teek and grabbed Wendy. "And caught you? Oh, my gosh! What were you guys _doing_?"

"Watching a British horror movie," Dipper told her. "Black and white."

"Man," Mabel complained, letting go of Wendy and for a change not grabbing another victim, "even your _boring_ stuff is boring!"

"Hang on," Dipper said. He went inside and found Soos, who was alone in the parlor watching the evening news, and asked him to do them a favor, explaining what Wendy needed him to do.

"Sure, Dipper," Soos said, reaching for the remote. "Be right with you."

He joined the others on the porch and said, "Now, Manly Dan—uh, what am I supposed to, like, do again, dawgs?"

Dipper explained again, Wendy called her dad, and she started off by saying, "Dad, I know that this is gonna sound fishy, but here's my boss. You know Soos."

"Yeah, 'course I do," Dan said, his voice so loud that the others could hear.

Wendy handed Soos the phone and said, "You're on."

Soos said, "Um, hi, Mr. Corduroy? Uh, this is Soos, Mr. Mystery from the fantastic Mystery Shack where—oh, you know already. Well, OK, Wendy's having some trouble, like, you, know, road trouble or some deal, nothing major, but she'll have to fix it tomorrow when there's light. So if it's all right with you, she'll sleep over with us. Huh? She'll share the guest room with Mabel. Mabel Pines. The girl with the sweat—oh, you do. Just a sec." Soos put his hand over the phone and said, "He wants to know if you got, like, clothes and junk."

Wendy reached for the phone. "Hi, Dad, yeah, I always have a spare set of clothes here, in case of accidents. Oh, well, like, one time a tourist was goin' out as Toby Determined came walkin' in, and the guy saw Toby and turned and projectile-vomited on me—happened to you, too, huh? Accidents like that. And I'll borrow Mabel's toiletries and all, so it's OK. Yeah, I know tomorrow's Sunday, but the Sprawl-Mart opens at nine, and I can get a couple fuses for the car there, that's all I need. No, I got the money. You gonna need your truck? Where? OK, that's good, just drive my car to the Shack and I'll give you back your credit card and keys. You know where my spare key is, right? Yeah. Fine, see you and the boys tomorrow around ten."

"Is it OK?" Soos asked. "I didn't, like, over-act, did I? I get nervous and over-act."

"You did fine," Wendy said.

"Man," Mabel said, "I can't believe you lied to your father! I would never lie to my dad, unless it was convenient."

"What lie did we tell?" Wendy asked with a grin. "Havin' a spook motorcycle stalkin' you is road trouble, right? And I really could go to the Sprawl-Mart tomorrow and buy fuses, even if the pick-up doesn't need 'em. But I'll go buy a couple so Dad can see the empty box. He and the boys are running up to visit his cousin tomorrow, and I never go, 'cause Steve is always so nasty to me under the pretense of teasing. About going to the store, it should be all right to go out in the daytime, right, Dip?"

"I think so," he said. "Ghosts traditionally are creatures of the night. The only time they're not, really, is when they're haunting one specific spot, like in the Skull Fracture or the Westminster Mansion down in San Jose. Then you can see them in daylight sometimes, but they're tied to the spot."

Teek went into the gift shop and called his folks. He came out a couple of minutes later. "They don't like it," he said, "but they say I can stay if Soos says it's all right."

Soos reached for his phone, practically swelling with pride. "Hi, Mrs. O'Grady? You sound way different over the phone! Oh, sorry, Mr. O'Grady. Yeah, Teek is, like, welcome to spend the night here. You know, like mi casa es la carretera mejor. Oh, sure. Just a minute, Teek's dad dude." He covered the phone. "They'll bring you clothes for Mass, OK?" Teek nodded. "He says that's OK, Mr. O'Grady. Me and Melody will be going to eleven o'clock Mass, too, so he can, like, hitch a ride with us if you want. Great! See you around ten, then. Bye!" He handed the phone back. "Yes! Did it again!"

"You're great, Soos," Mabel said.

"I shall try to wear the mantel of greatness humbly," Soos assured them.

Wendy nudged Dipper. "Dude," she whispered, "did Soos just tell Mr. O'Grady 'my home is the main highway?'"

"Let him have this," Dipper whispered back.

* * *

The night passed quietly enough, although Dipper learned that Teek snored. He got up around one o'clock and used the ladder in the gift shop to climb up to the roof—sometimes he did that when he wanted to think.

He eased down the slope to the flat roof that was Wendy's secret hangout, stepping carefully because it was dark—the parking-lot lights and the sign lights were all off. He located the lawn chair by feel and started to sit in it when Wendy said, "Hey, Dip! Cut it out!"

The unexpected voice frightened him so much he might have fallen, except Wendy grabbed his wrist. _What's wrong, Dip? Whoa, didn't mean to scare you!_

— _Oh, didn't know it was you! Sorry, Wen, I'm having trouble getting to sleep. You?_

 _Yeah, me too. But it's a quiet night. No motorcycle lights or anything._ The lawn chair creaked as she climbed out. "We can just sit here side by side," she said, settling down.

He sat beside her, their arms around each other. _—What are you wearing?_

 _Just a tee shirt. And my underwear. No nightgown over here._ He felt her hand stroke down to his thigh. _Just in your undershorts, huh, Dip?_

— _Yeah. I've got one pair of pajamas, but I hardly ever wear them. And my tee shirt. Um, so, um, you still sleep on your stomach?_

Wendy laughed out loud. _Yeah, go to sleep that way, anyhow. Usually I'll toss and turn a little. Why? Is that just small talk?_

— _I guess so. Sorry. I—well, it's kinda awkward. I mean, if I'd known you were up here—_

 _You would've put on a suit and tie, huh? Chill, Dipper. Look up at the stars. They're real bright tonight._

— _Cold front coming in. It's a little cool for skygazing._

 _Little bit. So . . . what do you think about that motorcycle? How does it tie into the haunting?_

— _You got me. I guess maybe we'll find out tomorrow after Grunkle Ford gets here._

 _Yeah. It is getting a little cool. Guess we should go in, huh?_

— _Guess so. Teek snores._

Wendy chuckled. _Yeah, so does Mabel!_

— _Hers is a lot softer snore. Or it used to be._

 _Don't remember you snoring._

It was true, they'd slept together—just slept, no funny business—a few times. Aloud, Dipper said, "That's good news. I don't think you snore, either. Grunkle Stan does—man, I'm sleepy, getting all off the track with stuff like that!"

"Let's go in and try to catch some sleep."

They scrambled back up to the roof peak, located the trap door—Dipper had left it open, and a dim light showed its outline—and Wendy said, "Me first."

After she had started down the ladder, Dipper climbed down, too, fastening the trap door. Below him, Wendy said, "Uh-huh, thought so. If you'd gone first, you'd have had a great view."

"Are you looking at my butt?" Dipper asked, climbing the rest of the way down.

"A girl has to grab her chances," Wendy said. She yawned. "I was all revved up about the stupid ghost cycle, but I think I can sleep now." She kissed him. "Good night, Dip."

"Good night, Magic Girl."

Wendy tiptoed barefoot down the hall to Mabel's room and quietly went inside, and then Dipper, knowing how to avoid most of the creaks, climbed up the stairs to the attic and slipped back into his own bed. That time he fell asleep, and for at least a few hours everything was peaceful and he wasn't worried about ghosts or phantom cyclists.

Tomorrow would be time enough to worry again.


	10. Chapter 10

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 13-14, 2016)**

 **10: Out in the Dark**

While at the Shack everyone slept . . .

The Harley blasted over the hills of Gravity Falls, sometimes on the main roads, sometimes on isolated logging trails, rarely going below seventy mph. Saturday nights in Gravity Falls Valley weren't exactly rush hour. Only five times in all did the motorcycle come within sight of cars or trucks, startling every driver but causing no accidents.

Once midnight struck, the sparse traffic vanished. The cycle had the world to itself as it—explored, maybe?—as it evidently attempted to find every highway, street, road, lane, and dirt track in Roadkill County. It didn't succeed, but not for lack of trying. About three a.m. on Sunday, it pulled up to the Valley's only Britco-Am gas station, the one that is open all night.

The clerk on duty was Merton Vetch, fifty, three times divorced, currently single, overweight, suffering from heart disease and a touch of alcoholism, a lifelong victim of insomnia—his inside clock was just set different, he said. He usually got to sleep about sunup and snoozed fitfully until four or five o'clock in the afternoon. Come nightfall, he was wakeful even without coffee. It had been that way since high school, which he did not finish on account of falling asleep at his desk every day. He'd dropped out during his second tour of tenth grade.

Now, when a guy sleeps all day, what littie sleep he gets, it's always interrupted and the poor guy wakes up every other hour thinking it's four already, and damn, it's just noon, anyway, when that's the schedule, it is hard to hold a regular job. Vetch had tried part-timing it but couldn't even make the rent. Finally he found the few night-owl jobs available in Gravity Falls Valley: Night watchman, repo man, liquor-store clerk (he lasted two nights before being fired because samples were not allowed) and finally gas-station attendant.

He'd leveled off and was never actually drunk on the job, but being a little bit buzzed was no big deal, so long as he could count change. Mostly he was satisfied to be making enough money for a roof over his head and food on the table. Vetch had worked for the station now for going on five years, and the beauty part, as far as he was concerned, was that for the 10 p.m.-6 a.m. shift just about all he had to do was sit, get himself something to eat around one o'clock (he usually brought in a sandwich and bought himself a cola), and catch up on his reading. Cushy job with very little bother. His boss didn't mind, and the head office of BritCo-Am was way up in Canada, and nobody from there ever came in to check up on him.

All he ever had to do was sit back, prop his feet up, and either watch the little TV mounted on the wall or, maybe two or twelve times a night, hop up (slowly) when the bell dinged to signal that a customer had pulled up to the pump island. Then trot out, put the gas in the tank, fill 'er up, ten bucks worth, whatever, though these days with regular at $2.9999 a gallon, ten bucks didn't go all that far. Anyway, take the money, run the credit card, and once in a blue moon if a customer asked, squeegee the windshield or check the oil or the air in a tire. Hardly ever happened, really. So most of his time was spent slouched on his chair, watching TV or on other nights, reading.

That night, Vetch was reading an Outdoor Oregon magazine from May 2015. The station's owner, "Mack" McKefree, subscribed to, like, a dozen different magazines, all on outdoorsy subjects like hunting, fishing, camping, hiking, or just, well, outdoors. He never threw anything away but once a year his missus made him clean out the stacks that had accumulated over the past twelve months, and he boxed them up and brought them into the station.

Now, it is true that Vetch did not hunt, fish, hike, or even get outdoors much, but he would read, in his high-school dropout slow way, just about anything, forgetting it as he went along. It took up the time, and he figured he earned his $10.95 an hour (a buck over minimum wage because it was the night shift, after all, and nobody else wanted it) just by slogging through the articles.

He read mainly in long uninterrupted stretches. With the business happening almost entirely out at the pumps, he usually had the office all to himself unless some kid came into the office for a liter Pitt's or a pack of condoms—the station was well-known to high-school kids as being a don't ask-don't tell Dad sort of place. They even had regulars.

One little snot-nosed pimpleface always told Vetch, "Uh, they're for my mom," which Vetch found frankly sort of disturbing, but it wasn't his business. Anyway, unless a customer came in for something like that, generally it was just pump the gas, take the money, and scratch your butt, make change when necessary. So it was good to have something to read, even if the stories were about "Wildflower Friends Along the Road" and even if two minutes after you finished the article you knew no more about wildflowers (whether friends or foes) than before you cracked the magazine.

That night he was on the next-to-last page of the magazine article when he heard the 'cycle blatt up. It did not cross the He glanced away for a moment and saw it already stopped well short of Pump 1 / 2, a few feet from the pneumatic hose which, if run over, rang the Milton driveway bell, the ding-ding that told him to get to work at the pump.

What the hell, did the guy not even want gas? Vetch couldn't see who was with the bike without getting up out of his seat, and that seemed like too much trouble. Either the customer would pull up to the pump or maybe he'd just go away If he pulled up, the bell would ring, if he went away, good riddance to some jerk. Let's see, what was that about vibrant purple lavender? Funny, he didn't even know that flowers could vibrate . . . .

But as he read, a full minute passed. More. Vaguely disturbed, finally Vetch stood up. Yeah, there was the damn hog, pink of all things, leaning on its kickstand short of the pump, as if waiting for someone to come out. No rider in sight. Maybe he went to the can—but no, he couldn't have, because the key to the bathrooms hung on the wall behind Vetch, chained to a two-foot-long section of cut-off broom handle so's the customer wouldn't stick it in his pocket absent-mindedly. Maybe the guy was off taking a leak in the bushes out back of the station. Who cared.

Vetch sat down for another five minutes, slowly turning magazine pages without reading, barely noticing the color photos. Then he stood up again. Damn 'cycle was still out there. He squinted. The front window could have been cleaner, and an enormous cloud of little white moths were swirling around the outside lights above the gas island, making the glare oddly flickery. Was that somebody standing beside or behind the pump? Not using it, not pumping any gas, but just standing there patiently? Seemed to Vetch that he could make out a blurry maybe-human shape.

Something about the bike tickled his memory. Pink . . . oh, yeah. There was that crazy batch of loons from, where was it? South of town somewhere, outside the Valley. Statin's Ankles or something like that, they called themselves. Their stupid bikes were pink. Rumor was that a manufacturing error had led the company to paint a few dozen bikes pink instead of red, so they discounted them. Or maybe, heck, who knows these days, the bikers just were pink kinda guys.

Vetch sat staring out the window, tried to outwait the guy. Nothing doing. Fifteen minutes later the figure—he thought, anyway—still stood there, like a patient statue. Maybe he was sick. Or more probably drunk.

Grunting, Vetch reached under the counter and pulled out the secret drawer that everybody in the Valley knew about. It contained a Taurus Raging Bull revolver, an ugly sort of hand cannon already loaded: first two .454 magnum cartridges, which would drop about anything up to a rhino, and then four .410 shotgun shells loaded with four 000 buckshot pellets each, in case your aim is shaky and you need a little spread. If just one of those heavy pellets went home, it would ruin somebody's day, or so Mack had told all his clerks.

Vetch got up, the weight of the sidearm heavy in his right hand. He opened the door and stood there, squinting. Yeah, somebody was standing slightly behind the pump, silently, the figure oddly dim as though the fluorescent light didn't fully hit it. Kind of a hard-to-make-out gray-green. "Hey!" Vetch yelled. "What's the deal, guy? You want gas? Pull up to the pump."

The weird character just stood there, unmoving.

"You can't park where you are, it's illegal," Vetch yelled. "You want me to call the cops on you?"

No response. It was getting kind of creepy.

"OK, I'm gonna call the police," Vetch said. He went inside, but paused to look back through the glass. What the hell?

The guy was moving—but not exactly like he was going to come in and plunk down like eighteen bucks so's Vetch could go and pump five gallons of gas, those Harleys took premium.

He walked with strange steps, kicking his legs almost out at random, his upper body reeling around as if barely attached at the waist, his arms dangling and swinging.

Drunk for sure, Vetch thought.

The guy's arms swung loose at his side, and his head lolled back as if he were studying the sky for omens. His stride looked so bizarre that it popped gooseflesh up on Vetch's arms: the figure swung out its left leg, planted its foot, nearly took a knee, then straightened, arms a-dangle, and flung out its right leg.

The man, if it was a man, walked an erratic path, zig-zagging, but still making for the station door, like a sailboat tacking across a wind and making bad progress. What got Vetch was that he looked so loose, an ill-strung marionette operated by an insane puppeteer.

Vetch retreated behind the counter, opening the drawer to find the key to the front door, he didn't want that crazy man in here—

All the lights in the station went out. All. The gas island, the pumps, the exteriors, the interiors, even the pump monitors. All out.

Suddenly it was as black as nightmare.

"Damn!" Vetch fumbled for the phone, found it, held it to his ear. A dial tone, anyways. It was an old phone, if the buttons had ever lit, they didn't any longer. He punched the number by feel, 9-1-1. The phone rang once.

With his free hand, Vetch laid the gun down on the desk and scrambled around in the top left drawer. Mack smoked stogies, and he always kept—yeah, he felt it, the big box of kitchen matches, why didn't they answer the phone?

He scratched the match across the top of the desk, and it flared to yellow light.

From the darkness inches from his eyes, the customer's face materialized.

The match illuminated a greenish-pale head that looked melted, hairless, a gaping mouth, green gums full of fangs, no incisors or bicuspids or molars, just inward-curving, pearly fangs, and the eyes, the eyes, the eyes—

There were no eyes!

The mouth stretched wide and the teeth clamped down and the operator was saying, "What is your emergency?"

Vetch got off one shot that hit the creature right in the chest and didn't bother it. The big window grew a spiderwebbed crack around the exit hole. The .454 slug had enough impetus left to cross the highway and chunk a four-inch diameter hole clean through a young redwood.

"Sir? Sir?" The 911 operator, probably concerned because of the gurgling screams. Then something ripped the phone cord out.

A full minute later, what was left of Vetch shambled out of the station, feet crunching on scattered glass. While the eerie form—now shifting, nearly gaseous, no longer human-shaped —mounted the motorcycle and moved it over the pneumatic hose (ding-ding, rang the Milton bell inside, faint and forlorn and funereal), the thing that used to be Vetch filled the tank with premium. He capped the tank and did not hang up the pump. Green vapor flowed out of his open mouth and nose and joined the cloud hovering above the Harley.

The motorcycle roared away.

Vetch fell to pieces.

* * *

Eventually a coyote wandered up, attracted by the scent of meat. But when it found what was left of Vetch, it turned and fled away in fear and disgust.

The sky was just beginning to pale when the motorcycle roared back into the parking lot behind the Skull Fracture.

Something no longer solid got off. The bike fell on its side and lay there.

Like a drift of luminous mist, the shapeless thing glided to the back door. Which was closed and locked.

But not airtight. The stuff, glowing a faint blue-green, no longer even remotely resembling a human shape, flowed into the crack beneath the door. Because even uncanny things must follow some rules, and one was no going outside during daylight hours.

And so it returned. Spread and thinned until it was just a haze in the air. Searched for a place to settle and wait.

Wait for someone else to come and find it.


	11. Chapter 11

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **11: Sunday Morning Coming Down**

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _Sunday, August 14: We warned Mabel and Teek not to let anyone else leave the Shack until Wendy and I had reconnoitered. She saluted and said she wouldn't. But Abuelita won't let her bring Widdles and Waddles inside, so they're parked on the Museum porch, snoozing. I hope they stay there._

 _Tripper is antsy this morning, as if he senses something's not right, but he didn't try to grab us and keep us from going out, and he didn't beg to come along, though he loves car rides. Tomorrow he gets his cone off, finally. It may just be that it's bothering him. I really hope that's all it is._

 _Anyhow, I got to drive Helen Wheels for a change, and Wendy and I were at the Sprawl-Mart the second it opened. She went straight to the Automotive section. She browsed for less than half a minute, then said, "Perfect. Let's go, Dip!" We went to the register and she paid twenty-odd dollars for the little device._

 _As we started back to the Shack, I turned downtown and went around the block where the Skull Fracture is—a long block, because it shades into the junkyard that for years was Fiddleford's home. Wendy didn't say anything. She knew why I was detouring. I pulled into the lot and said, "Hey—there's the pink motorcycle!"_

 _It was laying on its side, not far from the back door. "Don't get out, Dipper," Wendy said, her voice tense. "I don't trust it."_

" _I agree," I said. I rolled down the window. "Something feels—not right. Do you get that, too?"_

" _Kinda, yeah," she said. "Sort of like the heavy air before a big storm breaks."_

" _Wish I'd brought my anomaly detector."_

" _Wait until Ford gets back," Wendy advised._

" _OK. Let's go." I backed out, went the rest of the way around the block, and made the left turn for the main street, and then at the end another left and a right to head for the Shack._

 _I felt strange—I can't explain it. OK, maybe I can at least describe it. When I got my electric guitar, I had a chance to plug into a really high-powered, high-end amp once that a friend of Mabel's has in his folks' garage. He hooked up and said, "OK, try a couple chords."_

 _I was going to do an E-minor, C riff—about the most basic, and one of the first chord combos I'd ever learned. I shredded the E-minor and almost wet my pants. I mean, the guy had cranked the volume up to eleven! And I was right in front of this humongous amp. It felt like my bones and guts were vibrating. He got a big laugh out of it._

 _But that's kind of the way I felt driving away from the Skull Fracture and toward the Shack—strung too tight, quivering inside, knowing that something was gonna happen but not what or when. "Ancient Mariner time," I told Wendy._

" _What's that? The poem by, was it, William Blake?"_

" _Coleridge," I told her. "Yeah, the part where the old sailor is talking about how all the dead came to life and worked the ship and he was standing looking ahead to see where they were going. And suddenly he's terrified to look back." I recited the stanza for her:_

" _Like one, that on a lonesome road_

 _Doth walk in fear and dread,_

 _And having once turned round walks on,_

 _And turns no more his head;_

 _Because he knows, a frightful fiend_

 _Doth close behind him tread."_

" _You're giving me goosebumps," she muttered. "Hey, if your books ever come out as audio, you oughta read them in that voice, man. Scary."_

" _That's because I'm scared," I told her._

 _Before 9:30, my girl had changed out the fuse—she actually melted the old one over a gas burner for a few seconds. "Dad's gonna want proof," she explained. She stuck the old one in the blister pack the new one had come in._

 _Dan and her brothers showed up not many minutes later in Wendy's Dart. "Got it fixed?" he asked._

" _Yeah." She handed him the old battery fuse. "This blew, so she wasn't takin' a charge. I borrowed Soos's battery charger, so it ought to be OK to go now. Try it."_

 _They exchanged keys, and Dan got the pickup engine revving. "I shoulda checked," he said, leaning out the driver's window. "The truck's nearly five years old. Things go wrong."_

" _It's cool," Wendy said. "We were here when it went out of commission, and I kinda figured that was the problem, so I checked, and bingo, there it was. Hey, you owe me twenty-three bucks for that." She grinned. "No charge for labor!"_

" _I'll settle up later," he said. "Sure you don't want to go visit Steve?"_

" _Nuh-uh," she said firmly. "He always wants to pinch my bottom."_

" _He's just teasing," Dan said. "But, yeah, I get it. OK, we'll prob'ly be gone until eight, nine tonight, so your lunch and dinner are on you."_

 _He and the boys pulled out, and Wendy took my hand. Our touch-telepathy cut in at once._

* * *

 _I'm glad to see 'em getting safe out of the Valley, Dip._

— _I know what you mean. OK, let's see when Stan wants to leave._

The answer to that was "Right now!" Mabel and Teek were getting ready for Mass—Teek's folks had brought over his sport jacket, a white shirt, tie, and proper shoes, and Mabel was wearing a short-sleeved black dress ("My LBD!" she told Wendy), with a lacy white crocheted cardigan and—courtesy of Abuelita—a lacy black mantilla. "Do I look appropriate?"

"You look fine," Teek, in blue trousers, white shirt, and light-blue sports jacket said with a smile.

"A _niña muy modesta,_ " Abuelita said, twitching the sweater a little. "That means you are dress' very appropriate for church."

Wendy and Dipper left the Ramirezes, Teek, and Mabel preparing to leave for Mass, while they walked downhill to Stan and Sheila's house. Stan was already in the driveway, behind the wheel of his brother's classic Lincoln. "Come on, come on," he said. "You made me late enough as it is."

They got into the spacious front seat with him, he backed out and turned, and then they rolled through town. "Somethin's gettin' my neck hairs prickly," he muttered.

"Same here," Dipper said. He was in the middle, Wendy riding shotgun. "I don't think this is nearly over yet."

"Yeah, well, let my brother do his magical mumbo-jumbo and shoot it with an accelotron or atomizer or whatever," Stan said. "Hope traffic ain't too slow."

Traffic was really fairly good—Sunday morning, after all—but at about eleven-forty, Ford called, Stan's phone trilled, and Stan, still at the wheel, said, "Fish that outa my coat pocket and answer it, Dip. Five'll get you ten it's Poindexter."

Dipper didn't take the bet, and it was just as well. Ford said, "Stanley! We've just reclaimed our baggage. Are you at the airport?"

Dipper put the phone on speaker and said, "Grunkle Ford, this is Dipper. Stan's driving. We're probably fifteen or twenty minutes from you right now. We'll be there soon."

"That's just as well," Ford said. "Lorena and I want to, um, freshen up. We'll meet you at the passenger pick-up. We'll be standing at the curb."

"I think I can recognize your ugly face, Brainiac," Stan said.

"It's sort of your face, too, Stanley," Ford said with dignity.

"Yeah, I knew there was some reason I hate to shave in the mornings!" Stan shot back. "Hey, I'm drivin' your car, so you keep an eye out for us, too. Dip and Wendy are with me. I figured they can fill you in on this deal and I'll drive us back."

"That's a good suggestion," Ford said.

"'Course it is! I made it, didn't I? See you in about fifteen, Sixer."

That was just about two minutes too optimistic, but not many minutes past noon they joined the queue of cars moving slowly past the baggage-claim area. "I see them," Wendy said. "Third exit there."

Stan found an opening, neared the curb, and they jumped out to help Ford and Lorena stow their bags in the trunk. "You guys get in the back seat," Wendy said. "Dip, you ride with them. I'll stay up front. Dipper will tell you all about this mess, and Stan and I will chime in if we need to."

Ford and Lorena looked a bit haggard—it was a long flight from D.C., and Ford said they'd had to be at the airport at four-thirty that morning for a six-a.m. flight. And then they'd had to change planes in Chicago, where there was a layover.

"I'm sorry about that," growled Stan. "But there's some kinda haunty thing hangin' out in the men's room of the Skull Fracture. I mean worse than the usual customers, too. Tell 'em, Dip."

Dipper went through the story. Ford asked him about the anomaly-detector readings, and when Dipper had gone through them, Ford pondered for a few minutes. At last he said, "It sounds like a vengeance ghost to me. The malevolence, the sense of foreboding you mention—did that track?"

"It didn't register as a normal ghost at all," Dipper said. He shrugged. "I know that sounds kinda crazy, but you know what I mean. It was more like—I don't know. It had intelligence, but it was more like a focused sense of anger and resentment. I think it meant to do us harm."

Half-turned in the front seat, Wendy said, "Tell 'em about the motorbike."

"What motorbike?" Stan asked. They had not yet brought him up to speed, figuring if they had, they'd only have to tell the story twice.

"It's gotta be connected," Dipper said. "OK, we noticed this pink motorcycle parked out behind the Skull Fracture—"

"Pink?" Stan asked. "Wait a minute, Tats mentioned that. That idiot motorcycle gang, Satin's Angles—"

Ford interrupted. "Stanley, I think that should be Satan's—"

"Yeah, should be, but it _ain't_ ," Stan said firmly. "Bunch of knuckleheads from around Bend. They caused a ruckus in the bar yesterday and Tats tossed 'em out on their butts. 'Scuse me, Lorena. One of 'em left his motorcycle out front, and Tats moved it to the lot, figurin' they'd come back for it. What about the motorcycle, Dip?"

Dipper told the story of the riderless bike that had buzzed both him and Wendy in her dad's truck and Teek and Mabel in Teek's car.

"No rider," Ford said thoughtfully. "That's suggestive. It might mean the apparition is striving to develop a physical presence."

"How would it do that?" Lorena asked. Dipper noticed that she and his uncle were holding hands.

Ford adjusted his glasses. "Well, in this instance, the entity might possess the motorbike. Might cause it to operate without an actual rider. Because if it's a haunting spirit, it's probably confined to its locale—the bar and the building it's in, say. But it can _project_ a force to control things like the motorcycle. Odd, though, normally for that to happen, the spirit, the entity, should have a connection to the machine it controls. I don't suppose this ghost could possibly be a member of the gang you mentioned, could it?"

"Don't see how," Stan said. "None of the Satin's Angles have died in the place."

"Well," Ford said, "as soon as we arrive, I'll go to my lab in the Mystery Shack and pick up some more sensitive detectors, and then we'll see if we can isolate and identify the source of the disturbance. We should be safe in broad daylight. If not, I'll bring an array of countermeasures. Also, I'll provide us both with protective devices—"

"Us, too," Wendy said.

Dipper nodded. "I think we have to go, Grunkle Ford. Whatever that thing is, I've got a bad feeling that it's focused on us. Me and Mabel, I mean. And Wendy."

"I'll think about that," Ford said, looking troubled. "The only thing is—" he broke off. "I'll think about it."

Dipper said seriously, "I know it might be dangerous, because 'an unfocused spirit of rage is one of the most terrible of ghostly apparitions.' Your Journal 4, the addenda on ghosts and hauntings."

"Yes," Ford said unhappily. "I recognized my own words. However, I don't want to talk about that, not now. Not," he said, squeezing Lorena's hand, "until we know what we're up against."

"And when we do," Lorena said, "then we'll kick its ass. "Excuse me, Stanley."

Stan barked out a loud laugh. "Poindexter," he said, "you are a very lucky guy!"


	12. Chapter 12

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **12: A Ghost Hunter Prepares**

Before they reached the Dalles, Ford nodded off, his head on Lorena's shoulder. "Let him sleep for forty-seven minutes," she whispered, and they all maintained silence.

That was an odd request, but Dipper had read Ford's Journals recording his thirty years spent in alternate dimensions, some silly, some terrifying, and he recognized the reference—by experience, Ford, who couldn't always safely rely on bedding down for a full night's sleep, had discovered it was possible to keep going and function well for days if he peppered his activities with cat-naps.

By long experimentation, typical of Ford, he had learned that, for him, the ideal length of a nap was precisely forty-seven minutes. Anything longer put him into slow-brainwave sleep, and if that happened, he needed to get in at least 95 minutes of sleeping, or else he would wake up groggy and slow. They didn't have that long left before reaching Gravity Falls Valley, so Ford was grabbing what rest he could.

Dipper remembered reading about Ford's sleep experiments in Journal 4—there were about six pages recording them. Ford had summed up: "I find that if I can catch five quick naps of forty-seven minutes in a twenty-four-hour period—roughly 3.9 hours, all told—I can function at near-peak alertness and ability for up to a week. Past that, and my need for deep REM sleep catches up with me and I must find somewhere safe to sleep for at least six straight hours. My efforts to push beyond this with naps show me that I rapidly lose mental acuity and muscular efficiency, until by the tenth day I am prone to bad judgment."

However, just because he couldn't talk didn't mean Dipper couldn't converse. Wendy draped her arm back on the top of the front seat, and Dipper put his hand on her skin.

- _I hope he gets enough rest._

 _It's amazing the way your uncle can zonk out like that. What's his secret, Dip?_

 _-Practice. Some of the alternate dimensions he explored were incredibly dangerous, and he was on the run all the time. He'd gave to grab what sleep he could in little snatches, so he kind of trained himself. I gather it's a kind of autosuggestion, like when I go into the Mindscape consciously._

 _You'll have to teach me that, Dip. Might come in handy sometime._

- _I'll do it right now. Ready?_

 _Shoot!_

So he sent her the mental instructions he gave himself whenever he wanted to drop into the Mindscape, that strange world of dreams and visions. However, he also sent her a warning:

- _There you go, Wen. But don't try it! It can be scary and disorienting, so let me team-dive with you a few times before you go solo._

 _You got it. Huh. Seems simple now that you laid it out._

- _It's not difficult after you get used to it. When I first started, I'd get scared and that would jerk me back out of the moment and I'd have to start all over again. But the Mindscape isn't bad as long as you remember three things: First, what you see there can't physically harm you. Second, they CAN do tremendous mental and psychic damage to you. But third and most important, if you keep your sense of self and purpose steady, you can do practically anything in the Mindscape. Change your shape, fight off terrors, make horrible monsters evaporate. You have to learn to concentrate and visualize what you want to happen._

 _Ford taught you all this, huh?_

- _Actually, no. Stan._

 _Get out of town!_

- _No, really. Here. Look at this._ Dipper replayed his memory of the time Li'l Gideon had sent Bill Cipher—this was back before they knew what he was, or how dangerous—into Stan's mind, seeking the combination to the Mystery Shack safe, and how he had spied on a memory of Stan's that—he thought—showed how contemptuous of him Stan was. That got straightened out, and also— _Anyway, Bill had blasted a hole right through my chest, but that was my, um, astral body, I guess it was, and it can't be physically hurt. But Stan fixed it up by pointing at it and made it heal, and then he said, "Word to the wise, kid. We're in the mind! You can do whatever you imagine in here!"_

When she got a glimpse of Mabel pummeling Bill Cipher, aka "The Triangle Guy" to her, with kitten heads, Wendy giggled.

Stan glanced at her. "What?"

"Nothin'," she whispered. "Thought of something funny. Tell you some other time."

And that was the last time they spoke before Stan parked in the Mystery Shack lot.

* * *

"Ford, dear," Lorena said, "we've arrived."

Stanford's eyes popped open and he looked around. "Excellent! Stanley, please take Lorena down to our house and unload our bags for me. She'll need a nap, too. Dipper, come with me to the labs. I may need some help carrying things."

Dipper had noticed that Melody's car and Teek's were both back in the lot, and he was not surprised—it was past three in the afternoon, and Mass had long been over. He, Wendy, and Ford went into the Shack as Stan took Lorena to their house. Tripper came running and danced around them excitedly, wagging his tail and yipping a little.

"Dudes!" Soos said, looking from the doorway as Ford operated the code on the vending machine. "I thought I heard you guys come in. Welcome back, Mr. Dr. Pines! Where's Mr. Pines?"

Dipper explained and asked, "Has everything been OK here?"

"Oh, yeah, Dip," Soos said. "No ghosts or monsters or anything."

Wendy said, "I'll go tell them about the trip, dude. You and your uncle take care of business here."

So Dipper and Ford went down to the first lab level, where Ford's storage lockers were. Ford was like a busy shopper in a grocery store, opening lockers, surveying what they contained, and making decisions: "Anomaly Detector Mark 2.3, this is critical—here, take two. They're a little heavy for their size, careful." Down the row to another locker. "These haven't been tested, but I think they should be at least eighty per cent effective, if not more. Here, one for you, one for me, one for Mabel—is Wendy coming, too?"

"And Teek, probably," Dipper said.

"One for Wendy, one for Stanley, and one for Teek, and that leaves me with only one spare. Oh, sorry, should have told you—put them all on the lab table for now, and I'll get boxes to carry them upstairs."

Dipper did as he was told, gratefully, because in about another two seconds he was going to drop something. He held up one of the last items, a black arch with two small silver spheres on either end. "What are these?" he asked. "They look sort of like earphones."

"They _are_ headsets," Ford said, going to another wall, opening another locker, and pulling out a flat drawer packed with small vials, "but not for music. The bands fit around your head and the interceptors—those titanium spheres—rest against your temples. These are anti-possession shields. Vitally needed if your opponent can seize control of your mind, a hundred times as efficient as a tinfoil helmet, and, I think, more chic in appearance. Let me see, let me see . . . did you have a chance to try anointed water?"

"No," Dipper said. "I have a little, an ounce or so, but—"

"Here, these are thirty-milliliter bottles. Three should be sufficient—they may not work, but we must be as fully prepared as possible."

"How about a quantum destabilizer?" Dipper asked.

"No, not effective against non-corporeal entities," Ford said. "If this is a ghost, however, we have dire need of something I'm out of- _Guaiacum sanctum_ wood, preferably at least twenty-five centimeters in length."

"Uh—can we get that at a lumberyard?" Dipper asked.

Ford shook his head. "No, it's from an endangered tree native to the Caribbean. It's also called _lignum vitae_ , or 'wood of life.' Exceptionally hard and dense. One of the few species of wood that won't even float in water."

"Wait!" Dipper said. "I've heard of that. Here in Gravity Falls—what was it, what was it?" He racked his brain, but his brain was as stubborn as a martyr being racked by the Inquisition and simply refused to cough up the information. "Gah, I hate it when that happens!" he said.

"Never mind," Ford advised. "I'll use the next hour to memorize the most potent anti-haunting incantations in the book. The _lignum vitae_ has special properties, but we can do without it. Probably. Now let's get a couple of boxes and take this stuff upstairs. Oh, have I had lunch?"

"Um—not that I know of," Dipper said.

"Good, because I'm hungry. Let's get in a quick snack."

* * *

While they had a lunch of sandwiches—Wendy had considerately already started to prepare them—Mabel went through one of the boxes like a ten-year-old on Christmas morning. "Do we drink these?" she asked, holding up a vial.

Ford glanced over. "That would be inadvisable. That solution is from a slightly different dimension and has the power of dispersing autonomic activity in vaporous manifestations, leaving them without will or comprehension. It could conceivably dissolve your mind."

"Might be an improvement," Dipper said before biting into his Reuben sandwich, sharp with sauerkraut and tangy with Russian dressing.

Mabel stuck out her tongue and modeled one of the anti-possession headsets. "I think I hear Venus calling me," she said.

Teek, who had changed from his church clothes to jeans and tee shirt, said, "I wouldn't mess with that, Mabel."

"Come on," Mabel said. "This is gonna be fun!"

"Please," Ford said, "take it seriously."

The door opened, and they heard footsteps, and then Stan came into the dining room. "That smells good," he said. "Got enough for me? I missed lunch."

"I'll make it, Mr. Pines," Teek said, springing up. "Mabel and I ate already. A Reuben OK?"

"Sounds great," Stan said, settling down at the table. "Thanks, Teek. Hey, Pumpkin, do your old uncle a favor and bring me a beer, OK?"

Mabel went to the fridge and brought back a Rimrock, but one in a silvery-blue can. "Here you go."

"Aw, _lite_ beer?" Stan asked.

"You promised Graunty Sheila you'd watch your calories," Mabel reminded him.

"Yeah, yeah, better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, I guess. Oh, Poindexter, Lorena's gonna sack out for a while. Sheila's gone down to be with her in the house, just in case somethn' happens. That unicorn voodoo will hold against ghosts, won't it?"

"I think so," Ford said. "It's an extremely powerful protective charm. Anyone within one of the mystic barriers ought to be safe."

Dipper was frowning. Something was tickling at his memory: _sharp stick, sharp stick,_ something about that wood Ford said he needed . . . dang, what _was_ it?

"Here you are," Teek said, setting down a sandwich for Stan.

"Thanks, Teek. Looks good! Wonder why they call them Reubens, anyway?"

Absent-mindedly, Ford said, "Named for its creator, Reuben Kulakofsky, a Jewish grocer in Omaha, Nebraska, who used to make the sandwich for his poker-playing friends. One of them owned a restaurant and got permission to put it on the menu as 'Reuben's Sandwich.'"

Stan stared at his brother. "One of these days, Poindexter, you're gonna stuff one fact too many in that big head of yours an' it's gonna explode."

"Unlikely," Ford said. "Thoughts don't have mass or volume."

"So when we gonna go after this ghostie?"

"As soon," Ford said, "as you finish eating. And may good be on our side."

" _Rak chazat_ ," Stan said with a grin. When Mabel gave him a puzzled look, he said, "Learned about that in Hebrew school when I was about eight years old, Sweetie. Ancient battle cry. For the glory of the Lord, and may he be on our side."

"He used to yell it in high-school dodge-ball games," Ford said with a smile. "Most inappropriately."

"You're only sayin' that 'cause I yelled it before knockin' you out cold with a shot to the head in ninth grade!" Stan said with a chuckle.

"Say it again," Mabel told him. "I wanna learn that."


	13. Chapter 13

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **13: Hideous**

Though not as one might say sentient, the presence in the Skull Fracture had purpose, to a degree, and awareness, to a degree, and spiteful hate to an unimaginable degree. It did not sleep, though it was nocturnal—during the day it felt compelled to hide within its nest, and its nest happened to be a shabby bar in a small Oregon town. For the moment.

Even though no direct sunlight reached it, the entity felt itself limited. It was like helium let out of a child's balloon: it spread through the entire space, and yet it became incredibly tenuous in the spreading. And as the helium in a child's balloon could not possibly lift a building, so the thing that now dwelled in the Skull Fracture could not do violence. Not to something as large as a human.

Smaller things, now, were different.

A colony of German roaches had made its home in the Skull Fracture so long that a mutation in the species had occurred, allowing them to live on beer-soaked bar coasters. About eleven thousand of the half-inch-long pests infested the spaces beneath and between the floors, the little runs along the inside of the baseboards, and the dark niches behind the bottles of rarely-called-for liquors. Mr. Digges, the owner of the Skull Fracture for the past twenty years, had terminated the pest-control business that formerly had the contract on the place. The humans who came in didn't seem to mind seeing the occasional bug, and if they bugs had any objections to the humans, they kept quiet about it.

Now the extermination began. The haunter had no animus toward the insects, but life was life. Each time it engulfed and devoured a living creature, the haunter became stronger, moved further toward being able to manifest in the physical plane.

The biker, Honker Dillinberg, had been absorbed completely. For a short time there in the gas station, the haunter had managed to shape a semi-solid body from the morphic memory of the doomed biker. It had even flickered with a little bit of the man's intelligence, not much (not that he had much to begin with), but enough to sort-of walk and more than enough to claim its second victim, Vetch, the attendant.

Now it could manifest a little bit more than it could have before absorbing the life force of two humans. It could not be solid enough to, say, pour and drink alcohol, but it could now arrange its substance to seize any skittering cockroach and . . . drain it. If it had a sense of taste, and if it could detect the flavor, it would have found the tiny little meals bitter. But all it sensed was the dim spark of cockroach-life. Within a few hours, no insect remained alive in the Skull Fracture—not only the cockroaches, but the ants and silverfish, neither as numerous, had been exterminated. Now if the haunter tried to shape a body, it would be partly human—the general body shape, at least—and partly insect. Maybe six limbs and a human mouth with pincers instead of teeth.

But wait, folks, that's not all. In the crawlspace beneath the bar—truly a crawlspace, barely eighteen inches from rank, moldy earth to the softening wood beams—there dwelled a colony of rats. These rats would never become coachmen for a disguised princess, nor would they ever cook a meal for a French restaurant critic. These were not cute rats. These were brown rats, incorrectly called Norway rats.

Brown rats are ugly customers: The heaviest of any species in the Muroidea superfamily (all the mice, rats, gerbils, voles, hamsters and their relations), it can be a foot long. Its body is fairly sparsely covered with stiff, bristly fur. It has powerful teeth and has been known to gnaw through concrete and even steel. Cornered, it fights like something three times its size and weight. They have in various places and various times killed sheep, chickens, pigs, cows, horses, and humans.

There is a story from World War I of some troops in a trench who saw one of their fallen soldiers in No Man's Land, and through binoculars they thought they saw him breathing. Six times small groups went out to rescue him, and each time the opposing soldiers (the story has been told of German, French, and British troops) sighted in on and killed the rescue parties, though they carried flags of truce.

Finally, as the fallen man's mates launched smoke bombs, two others managed to crawl all the way to their presumably wounded comrade. He seemed to struggle to breathe—his chest heaved.

They grabbed his arms and dragged him back and dumped him into the trench, where friends caught him and broke his fall. Then his tunic burst open and a dozen rats, that had been busily eating away inside the chest cavity, spilled out and ran, leaving only a few scraps of skin and mostly bones of the victim.

However, the rats beneath the Skull Fracture were not as obtrusive. In fact, they were the largest and most thriving colony left in Gravity Falls these days—the Gnomes had incorporated as a low-cost pest-control agency and rounded up and cooked and ate hundreds of these kind of rats. However, once again Digges was too cheap to hire even the Gnomes.

But the vaporous, nearly invisible haunter found them. It closed on them like quicksand closing over the head of an unlucky traveler who had blundered into a bog. The rats had more intelligence than the roaches, more self-awareness, and if they'd had anything to bite, they would have given the haunted a fierce battle. But their teeth couldn't close on its paranormal substance. Its stuff invaded their lungs and killed them from the inside out.

And then any shape the thing might form would be part human, part insect, and part rat.

The worst parts of each.

All that day the haunter surged through the building. It wanted to get out. However—

Even though at night it could venture outside, there was a price. Its center of intelligence, its mind, had to remain here in the spot it haunted. A physical manifestation—like the motorcycle, which had been easy to take over but the frustratingly limited in its uses—might range far and wide, but the connection between the mind and the manifestation meant that the haunter got only a dim and distant perception of what was happening.

It wanted more.

With enough life forces it could grow stronger.

With enough, it could become more aware.

With enough, it could break out into the world—

A small group of people in Asia tell legends of such a creature. They don't' call it a ghost or a spirit or even a demon, though they fear it like a devil of the night.

No.

Their word for such a thing as the haunter had become was—

A Hunger.


	14. Chapter 14

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **14: Confrontation**

 **From the Journals of Stanford Filbrick Pines:** 14 August 2016 **:**

 _To my wife, Lorena: In the unlikely event that we do not return, please get this information to Deputy Director Jack Powers. He has full authority to marshal all the forces of the Agency to deal with this should our attempt fail._

 _We are as prepared as we will ever be to conduct the investigation of the haunted pub called the Skull Fracture in downtown Gravity Falls. I hesitate to take the entire party, yet the lore of such strange and atypical hauntings suggests that anyone who has been in the presence of the entity—and survived—must be in at the end of it, for the sake of their bodily well-being and their sanity._

 _Disturbing news came during the three p.m. news break on the local radio station; my brother alerted me in time for me to hear most of the report._

 _The Britco-Am service station on Washoe Road has been . . . attacked is the appropriate term, I suppose. Apparently a good many people stopped for gasoline this morning. They found the station unattended._

 _Some of the frustrated customers must have cleaned out the racks of candy, gum, and beef jerky. The woman who came on duty at six a.m. found all the snacks gone and what looked like a bullet hole in the window beside the door. She summoned the police, for all the help that is in Gravity Falls. I called Sheriff Blubs and got very little information from him, except he suspected the Manotaurs of abducting the night attendant, a Mr. Vetch, and holding him for ransom, to be paid in jerky. There is a security camera, but a fast review of it shows nothing out of the ordinary until suddenly everything blacks out. When the picture resumes, Blubs said, there is no sign of anybody. The security camera doesn't show the window, he said, and he has decided that whatever made the hole ("Most likely a woodpecker") did it weeks ago and that it has no bearing on the disappearance. In my opinion, whatever attacked must somehow have disrupted the electrical supply for ten minutes, and in that darkness whatever happened took place. Even Blubs agree that the abduction occurred in near-total darkness, and when it resumes, the picture is hopelessly foggy._

 _Blubs says some kind of slime covered the camera lens. Though it records about half a dozen blurred figures helping themselves to candy bars and jerky sticks, they're too vague for detail, and Blubs says they must be Manotaurs or possibly Sasquatches, since those creatures are known to cause cameras to be able to take only blurred photographs._

 _I think we can definitely rule out Sasquatches. As for Blubs's suspicion that Manotaurs are involved, I find that unlikely in the extreme. First, Washoe Road is off a few miles to the west, and that is not the Manotaurs' territory. Second, though the stock of jerky in the station has evidently been completely pilfered, Blubs says there were no chewed-up empty packages around—the Manotaurs view it as a kind of inedible skin, but they chew it up to get the jerky from inside., and then spit it out. I have often seen them do this._

 _But what concerns me most is that Blubs said someone had dumped garbage near one pump. What kind of garbage, I asked, and he said—I shall transcribe this word for word from the recording I made—"Old pair of khaki pants, socks, undershorts and shirt, tennis shoes, and some kind a stinky gel that smelled like death."_

 _What color gel? "Sort of purple and chunky, green moldy splotches. I expect somebody dumped their RV toilet containment tank."_

 _I told him that I very much feared that he was wrong and that the gel might be the remains of Mr. Vetch._

 _He did not think it possible, pointing out that it lacked the usual basic bodily attribute of human shape. However, I did persuade him to agree to order Deputy Durland to shovel the mess up, put it in a large plastic storage bin, tightly cap and double duct-tape it, and place it in the morgue's cold room for examination. I told him I would call in a favor and have a forensics expert come tomorrow and investigate. I have already texted Dr. Brendon from Sacramento and she has agreed to make the trip._

 _If what I suspect it is true—if that is indeed all that is left of Mr. Vetch—then it is disturbingly suggestive._

 _Research note to self: Refer to Manhorne,_ Upon the dyverssitye of banefull Spirits (1566); _to Sevier,_ Des les mystères du royaume des esprits: les fantômes hostiles et leurs forms (n.b. the second, posthumous edition, 1803); _and the Pastoral Diary of fr. Anthony St. Vincent Dessoins, (n.d., unpublished, but covers the years 1855-1869, bound photocopy in my library, the locked bookshelf)—in the diary, note especially the long section on the ghosts of the frontier Pacific Northwest._

 _It has been many years since I read these, but I feel sure they hold information in them that is suggestive of the present circumstances. And—something just jogged my memory—look at Magnus Polydorus'_ Compendium noxii daemones, Apparitionibus et Pallidos (1701), _entry_ "Mortuus esuriit."

 _Dear Lord, if we are up against the all-devouring spirit that I fear, we are each and all in mortal danger._

 _Just in case the worst occurs, I record here the names of those of us who will in a few minutes attempt to confront and ascertain the nature of the threat: Mason Pines; Mabel Pines; Wendy Corduroy; Ticknor Keevan O'Grady; Stanley F. Pines, my twin brother; and me, Stanford F. Pines. I record this because if things should go awry, identification may be problematic._

 _Dear Lord, if you hear the prayers of an agnostic, let things not go awry._

* * *

At a quarter to four that Sunday afternoon, they arrived at the Skull Fracture in two cars, Ford's Lincoln, in which he, Dipper, and Wendy rode, and Stanley's El Diablo, with the rest of the crew. The pink bike still lay where it had fallen, and before they even approached the building, Ford scanned it with his most sophisticated anomaly detector.

He drew in a long breath. "Well, _something_ paranormal has meddled with this machine. I'm getting residual traces of pattern interference, and a hint of ectoplasm."

"Slime?" asked Mabel, who had seen the _Ghost Stalkers_ movies and cartoons.

"Slime?" Ford asked, blinking in surprise. "Not precisely. It is an intermediate form of matter, coalesced from the environs and consisting of both inorganic and organic—"

"That's slime," Stanley said, cutting him off. "OK, enough with the motorcycle. First, let me take off these chains that Blubs put up, then I got the key to the Skull Fracture. What do we do?"

"The chains, I suppose," Ford said. "The rest of you stay here, well away from the building."

He and Stanley walked around front, and then a moment later returned and Stan unlocked the back padlock and let the chain drop. Ford said, "I'm glad we don't have to call the sheriff. It would take him all afternoon to get here. Thanks for remembering to ask him to give you a duplicate key."

"Uh, yeah . . . duplicate key. Sure, let's go with that," Stan said. "What's next?"

"First," Ford said, taking the cardboard box of supplies from the trunk of his car, "Everyone put one of these on. Look at me. The spherical conductors go against your temples, like this, you see? The head band is adjustable, so slip the inner band to compress it, or pull to expand it, as you see me doing with this one. Stanley please—"

"Great," Stan said, taking off his fez and tossing it into the front seat of his car. "Not only do I gotta hang with nerds, I have to look nerdy myself. Lemme see. Like this?" He donned the sliver headband, and Mabel giggled.

Ford adjusted the positions of the two accumulators. "There, how does that feel?"

"Humiliatin'," Stan said.

"Is it too tight?"

"No, it's comfortable in a geeky way," Stan said.

Meanwhile, the teens had donned and were adjusting their own headsets. "I can't hear anything through these," Mabel complained. "How do we change stations?"

"There are no stations to change," Ford told her. "These are not radio receivers, but paranormal energy dispersers. In case of a psychic attack, these devices should intercept and scatter or at least greatly weaken psionic impulses."

Dipper told the others, "That means the ghost can't read our minds or possess our brains."

"Correct," Ford said. "Now, here—I know this appears childish, but each of you take one of these."

"Squirt guns?" Mabel asked, aiming.

"Atomizers, and don't use that yet!" Ford said, reaching out to push her arms down. "These are full of anointed water, which is anathema to virtually all ghosts—"

"Five-dollar words, Poindexter?" Stan grumbled. "Does that mean it puts 'em to sleep? If that's all, you might try lecturin' to them instead."

With a touch of impatience, Ford shook his head. "No, not _anesthetic, anathema_. it means it banishes ghosts—or makes them retreat, at least temporarily. From your descriptions, this entity has a mostly gaseous form, so simply sprinkling it with the water would be ineffective. These atomizers dispense it as a very fine mist, which should be ideal in neutralizing ectoplasmic vapors."

"OK," Stan said. "I think I got it. We spritz the boogey, it clears up, like blowin' a hair dryer on a fogged bathroom mirror."

Ford blinked. "That . . . is an acceptable metaphor. Now, here, Stanley, take this but don't use it unless I tell you. Mason, here's one for you. And I'll take the third."

"No fair!" Mabel said, eyeing the compact little silvery guns—if that's what they were. They had a handle grip and a trigger each, but the bodies were bulbous, brushed-stainless-steel oblongs, like very fat sausages, and instead of muzzles, they ended in small chrome parabolic reflectors, looking like something from one of the bad 1950s sci-fi movies that Wendy and Dipper watched. Mabel stuck her fist in the air. "Women's rights! We have the rights to have arms! And bears! Or however it goes!"

"Cool it, Mabes," Wendy said. "I think I can guess why there's only three. Lines of fire, right, Dr. P?"

"Precisely," Ford said. "These, for want of a better term, ray-guns, fire streams of anti-plasmodic energy. They will appear as cones of red light. Now, the beams can do serious damage to humans, so I want our lines of fire to be clear. No one is to get in front of Stanley, Mason, or me. Stanley, Mason, hold your fire if one of us blunders in your way. That's vitally important. If you do shoot at the entity, hold the trigger down. You'll get a continuous beam until the power runs out-at least five minutes of firepower. Stanley, you take the left flank. Mason, you the right. I'll take the lead. Teek, you between Stanley and me, and a little behind us. Mabel, you between me and your brother, and stay even with Teek. Wendy—you have your axe?"

"Right here," she said, drawing it out of its scabbard.

"But how's an axe supposed to cut the greeny-smoky thing we saw?" Mabel asked.

"Mabes," Wendy said, "this axe was a gift from Archibald Corduroy. You may remember him as the guy who turned you and all your friends, and everybody else 'cept Pacifica into wood that time Dipper worked on banishing him from the old Northwest place."

"Eww!" Mabel said. "He had an axe in his head!"

"Yuck," Teek, whose family had not arrived in town at the time of the Northwest Mansion haunting, said.

"He's a ghost," Wendy explained to Teek. "And he was then, too. Anyway, this is the same axe, his axe. It's weird, and I can't explain the details, but it's been in both the real world and the ghost world, and it has some kinda power."

"We _think_ it repels ghosts," Dipper said.

"I may not be able to chop it into kindling," Wendy told Mabel, "but I can mess up its day. We ready? Let's go before I get scared." But her grin said that was unlikely to happen.

"Wendy, you're the rear guard. Stay alert! All right," Ford said. He checked his watch. "It is 1653 hours, Pacific time, and we are going in. Stanley, unlock the door and then take your position."

Stan did as requested, and the party squeezed through the doorway and into the slightly wider hall, though it was a tight fit. Ford immediately opened the men's room door and scanned it, making a stink-face. "This is incredible. I think the spirit may be using odor as a weapon!"

"Nah, that's normal men's-can stench," Stan said. "What's your boogey meter findin?"

"Well, something paranormal has been here, but it's not here at present. Or if it is, it's inactive. The—is that thing on the wall over the sink a mirror? Incredible, it's so dirty! Anyway, it's like the motorbike, bearing a trace of ectoplasm. Let's go."

They reached the bar and hurriedly shoved tables together so they could take their stand in the center of the room. Ford used his most sensitive scanner. "It _is_ here," he said in a troubled voice, "but I can't localize it." He aimed the sensor up at the ceiling and swung it in a wide arc. "The return doesn't seem to be any stronger upstairs than down here. It's lurking somewhere, I think."

"Grunkle Ford!" Dipper said. "Check the floor!"

Ford pointed the sensor down. "Great Scott! It's beneath us! Stanley, where is the basement entrance?"

"Ain't one!" Stan snapped. "I dunno what's under there or how to get to it. Crawl space, I guess!"

"It's stirring!" Ford said, staring at the display of his detector. "Let me try something." He boomed out an incantation: " _Audi me, spiritus malus! Testor virtute luminis ite hinc gehennae! In nomine domini, ut!_ _!_ _"_

He studied the anomaly detector. "It's hesitating. I don't like this. It's not retreating. Quick, everyone, back up to the front door—it's the closest. Stanley, unlock it. If we have to retreat, first lock that door and then we all must run around to the back and secure that exit. I don't think it will emerge into daylight, but we must take no chances! Stan, Mason, ready your pistols. We'll hold it off to let everyone escape."

They backed up. Dipper felt the strange shivery chill that he had experienced before in the presence of the uncanny. He kept his gaze on the floor, but he couldn't see any manifestation—just a worn, somewhat warped wood floor, stained dark and oily-looking, with long black cracks between the boards, nail heads corroded to brownish-red, like old dried blood, and sometimes projecting above the surface—

"Got it!" he exclaimed.

"Got what, Brobro?" asked Mabel.

"I know where the croquet set is!" he said.

And then the ghost attacked.


	15. Chapter 15

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **15: The Other**

"There it is, Sixer!" Stan fired his weapon—as advertised, it sent out a long, spreading cone of red light.

The ghost had seeped up as vapor through the cracks in the floor boards, a nearly globular, wispy fume of swirling greenish gas. The ray struck it, and it jerked back out of sight—most of it.

The part that had been directly struck by the ray splatted the tables and floors in a pattern of purple goo.

"Watch your feet!" Ford yelled. "Use the atomizers around our ankles!"

Dipper felt incredibly cold, momentarily immobilized by fear, but Mabel and Teek pumped their spritz bottles, and a few tendrils of green gas coiling up near everyone's feet rapidly pulled back into the crawl space beneath the pub.

Then, all the way across the bar, at the entrance into the hall leading back to the stair and Tats's room, the vapor surged out again, but this time shrank and partly solidified into a ghastly, dwarfish _thing_ —

The body was vaguely human, huge chest and narrow wasp waist and skinny hips and two bandy legs that had a weird ankle joint and long, clawed feet. It stood on the balls of the sole behind its toes. It had six arms, the middle pair ending in insect-like pincers, the two in the normal position ending in hands that were not really . . . human. More like a rat's grasping, bone-thin fingers.

The head was worst. It had a humanoid face, huge blank faceted insectoid staring eyes, a rat-like twitching nose, and a fanged slit of a mouth.

But the _other_ face—that was worse.

It covered the creature's chest, like a photograph of a deranged lunatic printed on a rubber balloon and then blown up far too much. The bulging eyes were too far apart and wall-eyed, the nose spread so much it was mostly hairy nostrils, and the fanged mouth drooled.

Stan fired again, but the ray wasn't powerful enough to disperse the monstrosity. It bellowed in a strange, wailing voice.

Mabel squeaked and Wendy's trembling voice asked, "What's it doing to us?"

"Radiating emanations of fear! Don't give in!" Ford yelled back: "O Ímpie! Sanctus Lux et gloria Dominus cogit tibi! Silentium! Silentium! Silentium!"

The gibbering, loose-lipped mouth slashed across the thing's belly writhed but the sound it produced ceased, and Dipper felt some of the paralyzing fear let up.

"The door, Stanley!" Ford snapped.

Stan unlocked the front door and said, "Get out, kids, let me and Ford cover you!"

They scrambled. The monstrous ghost saw their retreat and rushed forward impossibly fast, moving more like an ice-skater than a runner.

Both Stan's and Ford's pistols hit it, one mid-chest, one head-high. It burst into putrid purple slime. The legs weirdly kept running for a moment but then dissolved into green vapor and streaked down through the floor as though being pulled by a strong vacuum.

"That was close!" Ford said as Stan locked and re-chained the door. "It was using its mental weapon of fear on us and also trying to utter a blasphemous spell. Somehow it's achieved the ability to gain physical form—though it's still weak."

"Weak!" Stan yelled. "Ya call that _weak_? It coulda had us if your Flash Gordon guns hadn't worked!"

"Quick, around back," Ford said. "The sun's bright, and I don't think it can venture out into direct sunlight, not yet—"

"Not yet?" Stan asked as they hustled. "Not _yet_?"

"It's not strong enough," Ford said. He grabbed up the chain as Stan locked the door, and then they both re-chained and padlocked it.

"Not strong enough. So what's it doin', working out at Ghoul Gym?"

"No, Stanley," Ford said. In a low voice he added, "It's . . . eating people."

* * *

"Grunkle Ford!" Dipper said for the fourth time, like a toddler asking for attention. The two adults had been ignoring the younger members of the group. "Grunkle Ford!"

"Not now, Mason," Ford said. "We have to regroup and plan. I fear that my present countermeasures might be too weak to oppose it if it gains full—"

"You're not gonna let it lurk in this place and gather its strength, are you?" demanded Stan.

"We have no choice!" Ford said. "We need some way to meet it on our terms, not on its—and not in here, where it has a kind of dominion."

"Grunkle Ford!" Dipper said.

"Not now!" Ford was clearly agitated. "Look, I'll put together some more potent weapons against this kind of thing. I believe it's a specimen of the hungry dead—that's a belief from—"

"We don't _care_ , Poindexter! All we wanna do is get rid of it. What if we burn down the place?"

Ford blinked. "That would be extraordinarily ill-advised. We might be freeing it from all restraints—a haunting entity must maintain a connection to the locus where it first manifests, or else it will be drawn into the afterlife—"

"Yada, yada," Stan griped. "OK, can we go and do this research and get back here while it's still daylight? It can't go out in sunlight, right? Like a vampire?"

"Like a movie vampire," Dipper said, but the older twins still ignored him.

Ford said, "I believe not. I cannot guarantee that, but the indications are that strong light dispels its power."

"What if we get some floodlights?" Stan asked. "High-powered stuff! Really light up the inside of the place! Would that keep it at bay or whatever until you can do your voodoo?"

"That's an excellent suggestion," Ford said. "I might be able to prepare a light bomb—good idea, Stanley!"

"I'd thank you if you didn't sound so damn surprised it came from me! Let's go, then. Oh, wait a minute. You think it rode this pink bike, huh?"

"I surmise that it somehow controlled the motorcycle, yes, sort of inhabiting it almost as if it were possessing a body—"

"Yeah, well it ain't goin' bikin' tonight."

Stan bent over the motorcycle. He said, "Hey, Wendy, get the took kit outa the trunk of my car."

Wendy brought it over—not a big kit, but it packed essentials. "OK," Stan said, dragging out a ratchet set and a pair of tin snips. "I want you to take out the spark plug and cut the wire."

That took her all of fifteen seconds. Wendy handed the plug to Stan, who dropped it in his pocket. "Good work. Now take out the battery and cut those cables, too."

Dipper watched as Wendy expertly took off the motorcycle seat—the battery sat beneath it—and watched her disconnect and take out the small battery. She cut both positive and negative cables as far from the terminals as she could. "This is kinda fun," she said. "I haven't had a chance at vandalism for a couple years now!"

"What else can we do to make sure it won't run?" Stan asked.

Wendy pursed her lips as she thought. "Break the chain. Hey, I know!" She opened the gas cap, and they took turns dropping handfuls of sand into the tank. Ford got into the game—"Just a moment!" He came back with an unopened liter bottle of water. "Part of the emergency kit," he said, pouring it in.

"There. That bike ain't goin' nowhere, no matter what gets in the saddle," Stan said. "But I got the coup de grace." He took out his pocket knife and slashed both tires. "Now let's go!" He carried the motorcycle battery back and put it in the trunk of his car, along with the tool kit.

Dipper said, "Grunkle Ford! Listen, are we safe outside, at least until dark?"

"Yes," Ford said. "I'm virtually certain it cannot tolerate direct sunlight."

"Good," Dipper said. "Listen, I'm gonna stay behind. I'll walk back to the Shack in an hour or less, OK?"

"If Dipper's not leaving, I'm not leaving!" Mabel said.

"I'll stay with Mabel," Teek volunteered.

"Dudes, you know I'm sticking with my homies," Wendy added.

Ford began, "Not here! Not so close to the—"

"No, we'll be all the way across town," Dipper said. "We won't come near the Skull Fracture until we're all together again."

"Why?" Stan asked. "What you got up your sleeve?"

"I think I might know something that could help," Dipper said. "But I'm not sure. It won't take long to find out, though. Come on, we don't have all day!"

The brothers agreed, reluctantly. Ford went back to the Shack alone, and Stan piled everybody into his car and drove them to the place where Dipper wanted to go. "I don't get it," he said. "What's in here?"

"Maybe a weapon," Dipper said. "Look, you get back home. Why not have Lorena and Sheila stay over at the Shack tonight? I think it's got the best protection. We'll be home inside of an hour."

"OK," Stan said. "I just wish one time somebody's explain something so's I understood it! Look, I'm comin' back for you in thirty minutes, get me? By then I'll have Sheila moved up to safety. Half an hour!"

"Should be enough," Dipper said. "Come on!" he led the other teens up the marble steps and into the Gravity Falls Museum of History.

Admission was two dollars each on Sundays, and Dipper paid. "You Pines kids know the place pretty well," Mrs. Homarth, the lady at the door, said. She was attired in 1890s garb—a tulip-bell skirt, maroon, and a black jacket with shoulder pads and frills on the bodice. She had parted her permed gray hair in the middle and wore little maroon bows above her ears. "But if you want, here are maps and brochures—"

"Thanks but we'll do a self-guided tour," Dipper said hastily. "Come on!"

On an August afternoon with nothing special going on in town—Woodstick was coming up the next weekend—the place was uncrowded. Dipper went straight up to a room on the second floor, toward the back, where relics of some of Gravity Falls's most illustrious citizens resided.

There, for example, were Phineas Northwest's false teeth, an imposing set of choppers crafted from whalebone and 24-carat gold. Phineas had been a great-great uncle or something of Pacifica's. His older brother had been mayor of the town, and Phineas was a sea captain in the late 1800s, making long trading voyages to China and other ports.

Toward the end of his life, he'd gone a little crazy and he spent his last three years barricaded in a room on the top floor of Northwest Manor. He had all his meals brought to him, kept a small dog that he used as a poison tester before he ate or drink anything, and normally refused to speak, communicating only by written notes and charades. He refused to allow anyone to speak the words "sea" or "ocean" in his presence.

On New Year's Day of 1897 he didn't answer the door when breakfast was brought to his room. They had to break the lock to get in, and they found Captain Northwest in bed.

Drowned. In seawater.

His little dog was dead, too—of fright, they thought.

Anyway.

The closest thing to national fame that Gravity Falls could boast was that Phinsey Canton had been elected to the U.S. Congress in 1916 for one term. He lost favor with his colleagues by insisting that the United States' entry into World War I in 1917 should include an invasion and conquest of Canada.

A two-year term is short, but somehow at the end of his two years, when he lost his bid for re-election to a write-in candidate ("Anybody Else"), Phinsey returned to Roadkill County a rich man. He bought a farm and entertained lavishly there until he was bitten by a rabid elk in 1927. One wall sported sepia photos of Phinsey hosting various luminaries at his big house: early silent-movie stars, politicians more famous and a shade less crooked than he, even the Reverend Holy Roller Collyer, an extremely successful evangelist in the twenties.

One thing about the photos: Virtually all of them were taken on the flat lawn behind the Canton farmhouse, on the croquet court. Phinsey was a croquet nut.

And in the corner beneath the photos stood one of his original croquet sets. It had been there for maybe fifty years, long enough for the three-by-five card identifying it to have yellowed: "Croquet Set Owned by the Honorable Phinsey Devise Canton, 1884-1926. This is the set identifiable in the photograph of Reverend Collyer and Congressman Canton, #5 above. It is crafted from _lignum vitae_ and is one of a number of sets imported from England by Congressman Canton."

Dipper took a mallet and one of the stakes. "This should be enough," he said. "At least I hope so."

"Are you _stealing_ those?" Teek asked.

Mabel elbowed him. "Grunkle Stan would say 'borrowing with the return date being open-ended'."

"How do we smuggle these out?" Dipper asked.

"Here you go," Wendy said. She tucked the mallet behind the sheath for her axe—it was under her green-plaid shirt. The long handle was a problem, but she tucked the end of it inside her jeans waist. The stake, about two feet long, proved harder to conceal. Dipper finally stuck its sharp end in his left sock, Wendy tied the top of it to the outside of his thigh with a ribbon provided by Mabel, and Dipper limped around.

"Maybe we'll get away with it," he said. "How much time do we have now?"

"Eighteen minutes," Mabel said.

"OK, let's go. Be nonchalant."

As they left, the docent at the door said, "Leaving so soon?"

Mabel laughed. "Oh, we just wanted to show Teek one specific exhibit, all nonchalant-like, you know, Mrs. Homarth. It's not like we came in to _shoplift_ or anything."

"What?" Mrs. Homarth asked in a sharp tone.

Teek quickly said, "Your hair looks really nice, Ma'am."

"Oh." She prodded it with her fingertips. "Thank you, young man! I was afraid it was too young for me, this style, I mean."

"No, it's _you,"_ Wendy said. "You go, girl!"

They left a pleased docent behind. Dipper negotiated the front steps like someone wearing a leg cast.

Away from the museum, he took the stake out, opening his belt and reaching down inside his jeans to pull it up from his sock. "Now I can walk," he said. "Come on. Mabel, call Grunkle Stan and tell him to meet us at West and Powell with the car. Here, Wendy, carry this."

He handed her the antique croquet stake and took his own phone, using speed-dial to call Ford. "Grunkle Ford!" he said. "Don't talk, listen: I knew where some _lignum vitae_ was, and I've got a couple of pieces. Will that help? Great, Grunkle Stan's coming for us. We'll see you in the Shack in a few minutes."

Mabel had made her call. She said, "Stan'll be here soon. So what was this petty theft all about, Broseph?"

" _Lignum vitae_ ," he said. "The wood of life."


	16. Chapter 16

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **16: Hungry**

Inside the empty and lifeless—quite literally lifeless now—Skull Fracture, the entity seethed and flowed, room to room, finally sinking down into the space under the bar floor. It felt itself on the verge of something. A new form, a new awareness, new powers, something.

In its eager absorption of human, insect, and rodent flesh, it had gained an ability to manifest in somewhat more solid form than at first. More, it was starting to gain, or perhaps recover, sentience.

The two human victims had not been sterling intellects. Honker was a simple man with a simple mind. He could just about fill out a manifest and nine times out of ten long-haul some cargo for delivery on time, Portland to San Diego, or Spokane to Louisville, whatever. He could read a road map, or follow a GPS app. He could collect his pay and live for the days off.

Typically he drove six or seven and was off for one, except for the ten days of paid vacation that the company grudgingly gave him, usually at the crap times of year when going someplace was out because of bad weather at the destination or at his home base in Oregon. He liked to take five days twice a year, if he could swing it with the front office, and spend those on the road with his biking buds. In fact, the excursion to Gravity Falls had come on the final day of a five-day mini-vacay. Technically, he should have reported for a hauling assignment at midnight.

In fact, the company he hauled for had just put a warning notice in his email. If he did not report with an acceptable excuse for missing the haul within the next three days, he would be terminated. Termination, of course, was no longer a problem for him.

Anyway, in his rare free time, old Honker could put away the brewskis, he was a good poker playing pal (because he was easy for the others to read), and for a biker, he was relatively good-tempered. His IQ wouldn't boil water, but nobody's perfect. His gang, once they sobered up, had realized he was missing. Next time they had some down time, they planned to retrace the route to Gravity Falls to hunt for him and his bike. If they didn't forget. Which they probably would, times being what they were.

The second man, Vetch, had been an unimaginative and incurious fellow, dissatisfied with his life but too lazy to change the comfortable rut he had settled into. A mild, continuing alcoholic buzz, an undemanding job, the ability to sleep through the day and wake up for the night—though it was hell on his social life—satisfied him. As William Jennings Bryan testified about himself in the Scopes trial, Vetch didn't thought about things he didn't think about.

Nor did he have the least sense of wonder. Nothing could have astonished Vetch. He'd seen Manotaurs years back and shrugged them off, mutant bison or some deal, so what? Then they had come out of hiding and visited downtown Gravity Falls. Some people complained about them. He never did.

He wasn't scared of them, worried about them, or curious about them. They were just there, like the trees (he couldn't name any species accurately—they were pines or the other kind) and the flowers (he knew roses, which were red, even if they were really tulips, and aside from that, a flower was a flower was a flower, right, Gertrude Stein?

What we're getting at here is that neither man especially sharpened the entity's wits.

It did not absorb their personalities. The essences of Honker and Vetch had gone away. They had passed on. They were no more. They had ceased to be, expired, and gone to meet their Makers. Honker and Vetch were bereft of life and rested (perhaps) in peace. Metaphorically, they were pushing up the daisies, though the gelid remnants of Honker rested between the walls of the men's room and those of Vetch now resided in a cooler drawer in the morgue, nary a daisy in sight. Their metabolic processes were history. They had expired. They were posthumous people. They had kicked the bucket, shuffled off the mortal coil, rung down the curtain, snuffed it, and joined the choir invisible—or else the choir infernal. They were ex-humans.

In short, they were, as Honker might have put it in life, d-e-d, dead.

Nothing of their awareness, their personality, their sentience, survived in the entity, but a somewhat more focused _general_ awareness had emerged. The roaches and rats, dim though their tiny bulbs might have shone, had added to this.

No, really. Animals are cleverer than we give them credit for. The roach is no Einstein, but it is cunning and has developed a keen ability to survive. It is suspected that roaches would be among the few survivors of a nuclear Armageddon. Tough and persistent and alert, they added their faint intellects to the brew.

And rats—now, rats are clever little fiends. Lab rats have long ago tamed human experimenters and have taught them to reward the rats for merely strolling through a maze, the suckers. Rats can figure out things.

In 2015, Harvard professor Ben Vermaercke published a study that demonstrated how rats, given a specific mental task to perform, actually beat out human students—they were smarter than the college kids. Granted, the rats did not live on a diet of beer, pizza, and Ramen noodles, but even so, the findings were surprising and caused the Harvard scholarship committee to debate whether merely being a rodent should disqualify one from financial aid.

As laboratory animals in studies of intelligence, rats come in second, just behind monkeys. Mice are right up there with the rats, but in the Skull Fracture mice had established only a minimal presence, while the rats teemed down in the crawl space.

The entity had gained some of the mental acuity of the rodents, along with that of the humans and the insects. Now it felt . . . deprived. It hungered for more, not for flesh and blood, but for the sentience it dimly understood was nearly within its grasp.

And it felt angry. It had emotions, somehow—no body, but certainly the emotions of anger and hatred and—got to tell the truth here—of fear.

It existed bathed in fear. Not being quite over the sentience boundary, it could not formulate a clear idea of _what_ it feared, but whatever, it had feared it for a long, long time now. Maybe it was the hateful light.

It certainly _avoided_ light. Fortunately for it, the Skull Fracture had no lack of dim places. Very little of the bar or the lodge hall got direct sunlight at any time—a little came in through the front door in the mornings, and some streamed through the second-floor window in late afternoons, but other than that, the place stood dim, empty, and cool. However, if worst came to worst, the entity could always become vapor and sink down into the permanently dark crawl space.

But the entity also resented its confinement now. Somehow, its dull awareness sensed that the motorcycle had been disabled. It disliked that. The motorcycle had allowed a part of it, the growing awareness part, to explore beyond its prison in the bar. Now the humans had made the motorbike inoperable. If the humans came back, the entity would absorb them. Teach them a lesson.

Yet its motive was not merely hatred of humanity, or even fear of them, though it felt both. Mostly, it hungered for more food, for more life energy, for the ability to establish a physical form once more.

It was already so close, and with physical form would come more intelligence, even sentience, and an easier way to find more . . . food. In the dark it practiced forming a body. It could not quite grasp a proper shape in its limited mind. What it turned into wavered between roach, rat, and human, or unholy combinations of all three.

Now it could acquire semi-solidity. It wanted more than that, and it had come so close, so close. It continued to practice, forming and then dissolving body after body. None was completely acceptable, but it was coming close.

It yearned for more mind, for the ability to remember what or who it had once been, back when it was mind in a body. A real body. A physical existence.

It had no tongue, of course, but the memory was on the tip of its metaphorical one. If it could remember its old form, it might be able to take it on. If it could, it might walk disguised and unknown among the people of Gravity Falls. That would make finding more victims, more food, easier.

That would make re-creating its ancient form possible, recovering its sentience certain. It needed a sharp image of a physical form, that was all. And it began to intuit that such awareness was as close as memories it could almost touch.

For it had been a physical being, long ago.

It had a mind and a body.

It had a form of some kind.

Perhaps even human.

It avoided light.

In darkness it practiced.


	17. Chapter 17

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **17: Tick Tock**

 **From the Journals of Stanford Pines:** _I have assembled a few more weapons. I must admit, I underestimated the threat we face in that tavern. I am not sure that even our augmented arsenal will prove efficacious against it._

 _I have called Powers. He can have a team here within 24 hours, should we fail. I gave him the go signal._

* * *

 _I have just broken off recording this because I finally remembered what was beyond my recall earlier. Eureka! Though I am not sure what I just learned materially helps us. I believe I at least know the identity of the ghost we are dealing with . . . ._

* * *

Dipper found the door to the research lab locked, very unusually, and he pounded on it. "Grunkle Ford! It's us!"

Ford, looking startled, unlocked and opened up. "What is it?"

"We got these!" Dipper exclaimed, holding up the mallet and stake.

Ford blinked. "Um, Mason, we haven't time to indulge in sports—"

"No, no!" Dipper said. "It's what they're made of!"

"Liniment Vitalis!" Mabel exclaimed.

"Lin—I don't understand," Ford said, blinking behind his spectacles.

"She means _lignum vitae_!" Dipper said. "These are from an antique croquet set in the History Museum. We—"

"Borrowed them!" Mabel rushed to finish. "Yep, we definitely did not sneak out with them hidden under our clothes, if _that's_ what you're thinking!"

Ford took the mallet and hefted it, as though testing its weight. "Remarkable. Yes, this is a heavy enough implement to be made from _lignum vitae._ But there is a simple test—to the bathroom!"

They all rushed up to the ground floor and to the guest bathroom. Ford stoppered the tub and ran water. "True _lignum vitae_ is one of the few woods that will not float," he told them.

Wendy, Mabel, Teek, and Dipper crowded, stretching their necks to look. When the tub was half full, Ford said, "Drop the stake in and let's see."

Dripper dropped it, and it sank like a stone.

"It's the real McCoy," Ford said, pushing the lever to drain the tub. "Good work, though premature—this wouldn't work at all against the apparition in its vaporous phase. It would have to have some solidity to be injured by staking it."

"Like a vampire?" Mabel asked. "Oh, man, if it comes to that, never tell Pacifica. Her boyfriend's a former vampire."

"I think they prefer 'differently animated,'" Teek said.

She turned and punched his shoulder. "What are we, cartoons?"

"Animated as in 'being alive,'" Teek said. "They prefer that to 'vampire' or 'undead.'"

She stared at him. "How do you even know that?"

"Well, Paz talks to me from time to time," Teek said.

Mabel's eyes narrowed. "Oh, 'Paz,' is it? She _does_ , does she?"

"Mabes!" Wendy said. "Our problems first, jealousy second. Come on, man!"

"OK," Mabel said, her tone irritated. "But this isn't over."

"Come with me to the parlor," Ford said, drying the stake on a towel.

The Ramirezes seemed to be out. Stan waited for them, sitting on the sofa and watching a nature documentary on TV. He picked up the remote and switched it off. "What's up? And why were you kids in such a hurry to see my brother?"

"We brought him a weapon!" Mabel said. She held up the mallet.

Stan took it and whacked it into his palm. "Whattaya do, clonk the ghost over the head?"

"Something like that," Ford said, settling down next to him on the sofa. "Listen, all: I am confident that I have discovered our ghost's identity. Or former identity. The information may help. Then again, it may not."

Stan glanced at the window. "Well, spill it, Sixer, and no long lectures. Sun's gonna go down before very long!"

"Very well," Ford said, getting up and leaving the room. In a few moments he returned with a thick book—not a published one, but a long manuscript of print-out paper, held together between two heavy brown kraft binders, the type with the metal prongs that held documents through two punched holes. "This is a photocopy of a holograph diary recorded int he nineteenth century by a scholar and missionary, Father Anthony St. Vincent Dessoins—"

"Cut to the chase, Sixer!" Stan said.

"Yes, perhaps that's best. Well, to render a tedious story brief, the writer records legends and oral histories he learned among the Chinook peoples of Oregon in the 1860s. One of the stories, which he heard right here in the Valley, has to do with the earliest European visitor to the area that the Chinook had any memory of. Let me summarize."

And Ford told them what the half-legendary oral history claimed:

* * *

The Spanish first reached the Pacific Coast of North America in 1533, when Hernan Cortés reached what today is Baja California. In the 1540s, other Spanish explorers landed and established temporary colonies—and missionaries began to evangelize the indigenous people.

One of these priests, Esteban Pica y Román, seemed to be a fanatic. The Franciscans whom he accompanied tolerated his strange behavior for a few months, but in the end objected that he was "a madman" and ordered him to be bound in chains and placed aboard the ship that had brought them, to be returned to Spain. That was somewhere south of what today is San Francisco.

However, the captain's orders were to explore the shore northward, seeking a Northwest Passage. For several months he kept Pica chained and isolated from the ship's company. The ship followed the shoreline northward all that time.

It was somewhere far up the California coast when the prisoner escaped his chains and somehow gained the shore. The ship's log recorded "the prisoner Esteban Pica absconded with a sword and one pistol. Three of my soldiers pursued him for a short way, but the natives appearing hostile to their approach, they retreated without loss. We will spend no more time in this place. Without doubt the savages will kill the crazed man."

Ah, but like many Native Americans, the tribes in that region regarded deranged individuals as untouchable. Evidently Pica survived and went north on foot, perhaps passed on from one tribe to another, each wishing to get rid of him. Somehow, within five years he arrived in what was to become Gravity Falls Valley, then called by the Chinook " _Polaklie Ipsut_ ," "place of hidden dreams or visions." Or perhaps it meant "Valley of nightmares." Shades of meaning are difficult to translate.

According to tales collected by the diarist Dessoins, some two hundred years after the events, the strange white man the natives called "Pikkar the Insane" tried to convert each man he met to a religion that revolted the natives, involving the eating of human flesh and the drinking of blood. Perhaps that was the natives' misunderstanding of the doctrine of the Eucharist; or perhaps Pica was so out of his mind at that point that he took the eating of human flesh and the drinking of human blood as literal, not symbolic. Though he learned the natives' language, they found him hard to understand, for his preaching was mystical and his reasoning convoluted. When his sermons were rejected, Pikkar became violent, attempting to slay the nearest unbeliever.

Finally he attacked two children, badly biting both of them, and their outraged father killed him "with one deadly blow." Though the Chinooks had a tradition of burying their own dead outside of the Valley, they interred Pikkar where he fell dead, digging a pit too deep to climb from, wrapping his body in tough cords, and coating it with a three-inch layer of boiling pitch. They not only buried him, but piled a cairn of stones over the site "more than the height of a man."

Then (Ford said) things took a ghostly turn. Many years later, the ghost of Pikkar began to appear. It killed by engulfing and absorbing prey, at least once a Chinook woman and perhaps an old man who vanished, as well as animals. The wise men banded against it and with difficulty contained it and buried it again—for it had regained some kind of physical existence—but though they buried it very deeply indeed the second time, the inhabitants of the Valley avoided that spot, believing that "like a great mole" the ghost would gradually burrow its way back to the surface."

* * *

"So you think the ghost is a crazy priest?" Stan asked.

Closing the diary, Ford said, "I think it _began_ that way. Now it probably doesn't know who or even what it is—it's absorbed the life forces of so many people and animals. Its mind is scrambled."

"Yeah, well, why did it show up in our lodge hall?" demanded Stan. "It ain't a member unless it pays dues!"

"I have a theory," Ford said. "The trouble earlier in the summer with the Rumbelow, the earthquakes that struck, may have disturbed or awakened it. If in its ghostly form it ascended from where it had been reburied—it just might have emerged in the Skull Fracture."

"Heck of a supposition," Stan said.

"It's the best we have and a working hypothesis," Ford told him.

"But how do we deal with it?" asked Dipper.

Ford sighed. "How indeed? I think there _is_ a way to lay the ghost—"

"Woo!" Mabel said.

"He means to get rid of it," Teek told her.

Mabel shrugged. "I knew that."

"To get rid of the ghost," Ford continued. "If the ghost began as this deranged missionary, then as a believer, the spirit, at death, should have gone on to its eternal reward. In other words, it should have gone—" He raised his eyebrows in an encouraging way.

"To hell," Wendy said firmly.

Ford looked a little discomfited. "Well, that's an assumption. No, what I meant was it should have gone, in the time-honored phrase, 'into the light.' Those who have had near-death experiences have reported that they felt drawn toward a light that seems to be a portal, if you will, between life and the afterlife. However, if the missionary was conscious that he had acted in, well, not a Christian way, his soul might have avoided the portal—"

"That's why it can't stand light!" Dipper said. "It's afraid of passing on and coming out, uh, where Wendy says!"

"Aw, the poor thing's all scared!" Mabel said.

Tripper, who had been lying under the table, barked sharply.

"The dog's right," Stan said. "To hell with the ghost! Literally!"

"Grunkle Ford," Dipper said, "is there a way to contain it? To trap it?"

"That will be extraordinarily difficult," Ford admitted. "The ghost seems to have manifested as a hunger—one of the hungry dead—drawing its energy from the life forces of its victims. Right now it can create a semi-physical body, but that body partakes of all the lives the ghost has absorbed. And if pursuit becomes too much of a threat, it simply vaporizes and escapes that way. It may be able to kill even in its non-physical state."

"Look," Stan said, "you called in your guys in black, or whatever you call them—"

"What?" Dipper asked.

Ford nodded. "We have task forces for things like this. They've never come up against a hunger, though, so I'm not sure how well they can fight it. But the trouble is that if we let this thing fester, it will only get worse. Tonight it may be strong enough to venture out of its hiding place—though we've probably prevented it from using the motorcycle. If it kills again, it will be that much stronger tomorrow, that much smarter, that much harder to destroy. I believe we must attempt it tonight—lure it out and then do our best to contain or eliminate it."

"What are our chances?"

"I wouldn't even attempt to calculate the odds," Ford said heavily.

Stan sank back on the sofa with a groan. "Oy."


	18. Chapter 18

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **18: The Dark Passing of Wembley**

The thing is, Wembley was not a _bad_ Gnome. It's true, he was young, hot-headed, argumentative, rebellious, surly, and egocentric, but that, like taking squirrel baths, is normal for Gnomes.

Well, maybe that's a bad comparison—as far as anyone knows, only Jeff takes squirrel baths, but he's always tense because he's the Queen's prime minister and chief interpreter, and that is a heavy load for shoulders that measure eight and a quarter inches across. Maybe squirrel baths are necessary for his peace of mind.

Nobody has ever even attempted a census of Gnomes. Ford encountered Shmebulock's father, Shmebulock, Senior, and measured, weighed, and interviewed him, learning something about the Gnomes' habits and society. Shmebulock, Senior, who did not suffer from his son's disability of not being able to say anything more than his name, told what he knew, which was not a lot.

At that time (according to Ford's Journals, the extremely late 1970s), the Gnomes (according to Shmebulock, Senior) numbered 1,000. However, when Ford tested his subject's ability to count jellybeans (a great delicacy to the Gnomes), the little man counted up to twenty-two and then the next bean was "One thousand! Can I keep these?"

It isn't that Gnomes are inherently innumerate—as of 2016, Jeff and a few others could accurately count money at least up into the hundreds—but their society simply had small use for counting much above twenty. They simply never bothered to pick up the math skills. Therefore, estimates of how many Gnomes live in Gravity Falls Valley vary widely.

Gnomes, among other traits, are stubborn traditionalists, so to them there are always one thousand Gnomes and on the other hand, there are the Others, the Feral Gnomes, and they aren't counted because, to civilized Gnomes, ferals don't count.

Sometime way back in Gnome history—"Thousands of seasons," they say, which doesn't mean anything much, and Ford roughly estimates the crucial time as somewhere around 1650-1750—a sudden, unexpected, and unprovoked mass invasion of the deep-dwelling mole men drove the desperate and rapidly declining Gnome population from their eons-old system of tunnels and burrows up to the surface.

Mole men liked Gnomes quite a lot and ate any they could catch.

Driven from their ancient homeland into a surface world they only rarely had visited, the survivors made an epic, unrecorded stand against extinction. Had they been human, their experience would have loomed large in the history books. It was a hard-won victory against overwhelming odds.

At one time, there probably were no more than three to five hundred of them left alive. The forest floor was nearly as inhospitable as the mole-men-infested tunnels—foxes, bears, snakes, hawks, eagles—they all had a taste for Gnome flesh. Anything that could eat a rabbit would enthusiastically eat a Gnome.

To that point in their existence, Gnomes had never established anything like a social hierarchy or social order. They were an anarcho-Libertarian's dream group—completely unfettered by any rule of law, proud and free and dying off like rats in the deepest holds of the _Titanic_.

Three Gnome elders, in desperate cooperation, at last laid down the foundations for a surface civilization: all Gnomes would fall under the command of a Queen, the brightest of all the female Gnomes (they acknowledged without grudging that the females thought better than the males). Assisted by a group of advisors, she would make laws that the others pledged to obey.

Their first Queen was Telenna the Wise, and her first royal decree was "Let's get the heck up into the trees!"

And ever since that time, the civilized Gnomes of Gravity Falls have been arboreal. They flourished, making their home in hollow trees and the secret tangled thickets to be found in the denser evergreens. Their numbers recovered. They made a precarious living, though winters were terrible for them. And yet . . . .

Gnomes are contentious by nature. Their first impulse is always to disagree: "Nice blue sky today." "Not under the trees, it's not! It's green!"

As Gnome laws and traditions grew like the forest, always some Gnomes angrily dissented and who went feral, either setting off on their own as hermits or returning to the upper tunnels and burrows of their ancestors and gathering in lawless packs, as in the old days, risking the occasional mole man.

By the way, no one knows why the mole men suddenly erupted upwards when they did—they are truly deep delvers, and it's possible that something even worse than they were had driven them up to within fifty meters or so of the surface, where they found the Gnomes easy prey.

Anyhow, Ford had written in his Journal that "by my count, at least five hundred Gnomes live in the forest, though they are unsocial and uncooperative. I would hazard a guess that the outlaws [Ford's inaccurate term for feral Gnomes—in fact there was no Gnome law that anyGnome couldn't leave the colony for any reason or for none at all] exceed the number of the civilized, though since they are so secretive, and some are subterranean, there is no easy way of reckoning their population level."

We may see a gradual evolution of social organization in the Gnomes, the arboreal ones living in proximity to humans, observing them, existing just below their radar for centuries and adapting things from their larger neighbors. From about 1890 onward, for example, the Gnomes have had their own police force and legal system, though they tend to choose non-Gnomes for judges. An owl who is a judge can not only pass a sentence, but eat the condemned, a savings in jail construction.

* * *

So much for legends and history. Wembley was a young Gnome, not even fifty seasons old (oh, Gnomes recognize two seasons, Plenty and Starvation, so we might say Wembley was 23, 24, somewhere along in there). By Gnome standards, he was an adolescent, a teenager.

Gnomes are unruly enough as adults. Picture a rebellious Gnome teen, and you'll picture someone who is wildly indignant about everything.

So Wembley had quit the colony a couple of years earlier, outraged by nobody could remember what. The sad truth is that most feral Gnomes are solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and, of course, short—and so are their lives. They scrabble for food, they rarely ever band together (and when they do, they ultimately fight), and on their own, Gnomes just don't think that well. The civilized ones recognize this and depend on obeying orders—they're kind of a barely-organized hive mind that is subject to mental illnesses of all varieties. In recent years, they have even stepped outside their species to select their Queen.

By the way, to insure loyalty, all the male Gnomes marry the Queen, not to produce offspring, but to love, honor, and especially obey her. Currently the males, in addition to their own individual wives and sweetGnomes, are married to an intelligent and accomplished female badger.

Back to Wembley; in short, the young Gnome had lived two years on his own, stealing food from others, always getting in fights with his fellow ferals when he ran into them, assuring himself that he was always right and the rest of the world was always wrong. He recently had decided to go fully subterranean, where he could be by himself as much as he pleased and where he could always find a meal (true, it usually consisted of earthworms and grubs, but protein is protein).

He didn't believe in the ancient stories about mole men. They were lies perpetrated by the overlords to cow the Gnome masses into servility! Except for Wembley, who thought he knew the truth—though if another Gnome had happened to agree with him, he would instantly have changed sides.

Had Wembley ever run into a kind human—Mabel, say—it all might have worked out differently. People can change. Gnomes can change. Sadly, for Wembley, there was to be only one major change left in his life.

* * *

 _The entity had enough consciousness to know that the humans had ways of hurting it. Not of killing it. The entity considered itself, as far as its awareness allowed, as immortal. It could not recollect having perished—it had never died so far—and therefore it never would._

 _True, it did fear things, light most of all. And now it knew that the humans had something that they could spray and make it impossible for its tendrils to manifest as even loosely solid, and sharp cutting red lights that would injure it._

 _It realized that it still hungered and that it badly needed more, more, more food. Yet it had left nothing living in its shell, in the building. Just a little more, it felt rather than thought, and its mind would awake and recover the purpose and the cunning that it instinctively knew it had once had but had lost._

 _Vaporous rather than liquid, it prowled the rooms and hallways of the Skull Fracture, seeking life, anything, a trapped fly in an airless upper room, a termite in the wood, anything at all, and it came up empty._

 _It settled into the crawl space beneath the building, flowing over the remains of the rats, seeking even the smallest spark of life—a bacterium would be something._

 _However, it had done away with the rats and their parasites and bacteria. It was like a dog trapped in a kennel, a starving dog that had eaten all the kibble and all the rats and had crunched and swallowed every bone._

 _Condensing down there, the entity discovered a few crevices. Pipes came in and went out, water and drainage. They offered nothing. One musty opening felt absolutely barren. The entity could have flowed into it, easily, but—_

 _Well, it needed the darkness, but paradoxically, too much darkness revealed the distant Light. Not an earthly light, but a capital-L Light, the one it fled from. It could not allow itself to perceive that Light, the ultimate Light, the one that might pull it through to—_

 _To whatever waited in eternity._

 _It had no connected, conscious memory of how it knew that. But when its core had been human, it had raged at those who did not believe in the Light. It had slaughtered more than its share of those unbelievers, sending their souls through the Light and into—a very unpleasant place, it felt. A place of torment unending._

 _And even when, as a man, it had persuaded someone to believe, it had been quick to kill, too—a benefit! The new convert would go directly to—to a better place? Something like that._

 _It all made perfect sense if one were completely insane._

* * *

Wembley the Gnome was starving. He had even emerged from a tunnel and fought a raccoon for a scrap of food up on the surface the night before and had been badly mauled. Now his arms burned from deep scratches, and he was pretty sure he'd lost about half of his left earlobe to the raccoon's teeth. Worst of all, he didn't come away with even a nibble of whatever strip of rotten food the raccoon had been washing in the lake—he thought it was a very ripe fish the animal had found on the shore of the lake, but maybe not.

Hurt and still hungry, Wembley had gone back underground and all day he had sought something to eat, finding not very much—a couple of dung-beetle grubs, and they taste just as good as they sound, three worms, not a meal he could go very far on.

Then he remembered the crawl space beneath the Skull Fracture. These days it was getting hard to find rat packs or nests of mice, because the so-called "civilized" Gnomes—hah!—were taking jobs as exterminators for the hated humans and did a thorough job of it, though they were shrewd enough to leave a breeding population to assure business next year.

But for some reason, they left the Skull Fracture off their list—probably the human oppressors did not pay them, that was another thing, the humans had corrupted the innocent Gnomes with their filthy money, diverting them from the barter system that had been good for, who knows, thousands of years, anyway!

Never mind that the Gnomes used no inhumane traps or dangerous toxic chemicals, but ate the rats they collected in addition to the human money they earned! Never mind that the "civilized" ones were getting fat and prosperous! There was such a thing as being true to one's Gnoman nature.

Even if that meant starving in the dark.

Wembley knew the old trails quite well. The one he took lay long untrod. Oh, maybe a gopher now and then blundered into it, but for the most part it was so old that it lay in bad repair, with scattered dirt falls and invasive root barriers. Wembley scrambled past these. In his memory, there were always dozens of rats, too fat to be good fighters, holed up at the far end of the tunnel.

He was almost there, within a dozen Gnome-sized paces, when something surged at him.

At first Wembley thought it was water, that this end of the tunnel was flooded—

No, something green and sludgy, not water—

He turned and tried to flee. The stuff was so viscous that it seized his ankles and drew him back, dragging him on his belly. He struggled. The weird fluid engulfed him. He held his breath until he gasped, and then it flowed inside him, into his lungs—

His last impression was that he was being burned alive from the inside out.

The entity pulled its meal back beneath the Skull Fracture. It absorbed blood and flesh and bone and—most important—the little flare of life-energy that had been the core of Wembley the Gnome.

The meal was not a large one, but satisfying.

Oh, yes.

Wembley had been intelligent enough.

His spark pushed the entity over the event horizon of sentience.

Now it knew.

Now it could plan.

Now it could win.


	19. Chapter 19

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **19: Alerts**

Some people believe dogs have a sixth sense for danger. These folk are usually the simple, superstitious type.

The topmost intelligent people, those with bits of the alphabet after their names, say that is nonsense, that dogs merely respond to subtle cues to which humans are oblivious, because dogs have keener hearing and a much sharper sense of smell than we do. And, oh, yes, they can see a different spectrum of colors.

Somewhere in the middle are merely brilliant people like Stanford Pines (who indeed has an alphabetic train he may, if he chooses, append to his name: M.D., Ph.D., J.S.D., etc.) don't believe that dogs have a sixth sense. Nor do they scoff at the notion.

Because they _know._

So Stanford would not have been at all surprised had he known that after he, Stanley, the twins, Teek, and Wendy, left to confront the monstrous haunt for the second time, hoping they were better prepared, the dog Tripper became strangely agitated and paced through the Mystery Shack, claws clicking across the floors as he looked for a way out.

Tripper's doggy sense didn't tingle, it jangled like ID and rabies tags on a collar. He banged his cone of shame as he frantically ran up and down stairs, checked every door, every window, and found no way out. His heart told him he needed to go.

About twenty minutes after the party left, Soos, Melody, Abuelita, and the kids got home from an afternoon out. At first they kept Tripper from darting past them. But then Soos said, "He looks like he needs to go, bad, 'cause he's doin', like, the bathroom dance or some deal. I'll put the leash on him and take him out for a walk."

"He likes to go down by the sign," Melody told him.

He chuckled. "Yeah, that sign was a good idea of mine. Maybe he, like, admires Mabel's artistic ability. She painted it."

Melody kissed his cheek. "I know, dear."

Soos dug out the leash and said, "Come here, Tripper! I'll take you out so you can, like, do your business. Come on, stop spinning around and be a good dog."

Tripper obediently stood still. Soos clicked the leash onto his collar, and they went out into a hot, clear late afternoon. Tripper, though he felt that he was about to be a BAD DOG, also felt that he had to do what a dog had to do.

They got to the grassy plot around sign, Tripper sniffed around the mountain laurel roots and then one of the signposts—a good place for a dog to leave his pee mail so that other dogs could check it later—and then, without warning, whipped around the post, snagged the leash, and with a desperate wriggle backed out, husking the collar, the cone, and all right off his head.

And he was away, running at top speed.

"Boy! Come back! Don't, like, run off! Tripper!" Soos yelled, his voice fading.

 _Sorry, Big Man. Mabel and Dipper need me. Sorry, sorry. I don't want to be a BAD DOG, but some things are bigger than a spank on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper!_

And at full speed, he ran toward town.

* * *

When a Gnome came and told Jeff, "Granny Gypsum wants to see you," Jeff didn't hesitate, but turned the Queen, who was a badger, over to the custody of Shmebulock and hurried to the old witch's hollow tree.

Well—Granny Gypsum was not _technically_ a witch, because Gnomes didn't have witches. They had _hekse'vins_. They tended to be old women, wise in the lore of herbs and minerals and were schooled in many secret unknown things. Nobody talked about such old women or such unknown things, but somehow everyone knew of the secret unknown things—that they existed, not what they were. Well, the hekse'vins did.

These Gnome women could cure an infection, deliver a Gnome baby, which was not child's play, foretell the future in a limited way ("If you get into my garden one more time, young'un, ye'll have a sore bottom soon!"), and so on. And they had magic, of a kind, and everyGnome believed they could see what the birds and the serpents and the fish saw. And they could read the souls of Gnomes.

And if one called you, you went, no questions, no hesitation.

Jeff approached the hollow tree where Granny lived. It was an impressive hollow tree. Probably an oak with age-blackened bark and a fine growth of moss on its north side, it had been misshapen by something or other about two hundred years ago, and its branches swirled and twisted and kinked until it resembled Medusa's head on a bad-snake day.

Gnarly though its limbs might be, the tree still lived—handfuls and clumps of green leaves showed that—but ages ago a whole big branch low to the ground had dropped off, and the tree had been visited by woodpeckers, who started attacking the scar, and then other animals had come along and dug and gnawed the wood until there was a hollow. Then they denned there, and now, enlarged and refurbished, it provided a cozy apartment for a single Gnome lady.

No one knew how old Granny Gypsum actually was, including herself. Ancient, certainly—at least two centuries and maybe double that or more. She remembered the early days when the Gnomes had first come to the surface, she said. She remembered when the civilized Gnomes had created their form of monarchy under an elected Queen. She even said she had attended the first Queen on the morning of her coronation and had arranged her hair for the ceremony.

But then she also admitted, "O' course, I'm a terrible liar."

It was certain that she never spoke English—more and more Gnomes were learning it, since they now worked close to humans—but only Gnomish, and Gnomish with the old Deep accent, at that—the kind of language her people had used when they lived their whole lives underground, some of them seeing the sun no more than three or four times in a whole lifetime.

Jeff approached, knelt at the open door—carpenter Gnomes had built a ramp and had fitted doors for Granny, not for pay, but just to secure her good will—and called, "Granny, here I am."

"Come in, young Jeff," came the old, cracked voice. Jeff walked into a little parlor that looked like, well, a little parlor—a throw rug in the sapphire-and-ruby pattern, two armchairs with doilies on the back, a low round table, two teacups and a teapot on it, a fat, lazy tom-squirrel stretched out on the rug, everything except the squirrel Gnome-sized.

Granny Gypsum sat in the wing chair, her toes just clear of the floor. She wasn't much to look at, but no one could take their eyes off her—hunched over, eyes completely blind and looking like two glass balls filled with milk, a hooked nose with which if she concentrated she could touch her chin, more wrinkles than a satellite photo of the Cal Madow mountain range, and three teeth.

"We have lost one of our own," Granny said without preamble. She sat in her shabby old chair like a Queen on her throne (not that the current Queen, being a badger, had any use for a throne), her claw-like hands gripping the arms.

"Who?" Jeff asked.

Seeming in her blindness to stare into some distant place, Granny said softly, "Little Wembley, son of Grizzle."

Jeff blinked with surprise at the name. Him? "The one who ran away four or five seasons ago?"

"Yes. He has been eaten."

"Eaten?" Jeff asked. "How do you know?"

She turned her opaque white eyes on him, her blindness looking right into his brain. "I saw it."

"Then it is true," Jeff said. "No rescue is possible?"

"None. He is gone."

Jeff drew in a deep breath. "He must be avenged."

Now that—that right there—that is the mark of a successful Gnome. Jeff did not ask for particulars, he did not ask for advice, he did not lament or groan or worry about who would have to tell the Grizzles the terrible news. He cut right to the chase.

"You," said Granny Gypsum with a grim, wrinkled smile, "are destined to be great in the memory of Gnomes."

Jeff poured her a cup of tea, without being asked. She reached out a hand and, blind as she was, delicately and unerringly took it and answered the questions for which Jeff had substituted the small act of kindness.

"The evil thing is one who returned from the edge of the endless," she said. "In form it was once a Big'un, in essence it was an _ondskiol._ No, no hope for it now, it is lost and overdue to be sent to the eternal ice. It must pass. It must pass. It has enemies: Two pair o'two, two more who love them, stand in peril. Do what ye may, son of the Gnomes. A _trof'sthun_ may help Find him a _flodk'nin_ to chase. Feed the creature Special Mixture Number 6-6. Blood must be spilled. Let it not be yours or your friends'. Kneel down."

Jeff took a knee and removed his red cap. He felt the bony touch of her hand. She muttered in the Old Tongue, the Deep Language: "Stone of the mountains be the strength of your bones. Whip of the yew sapling be the strength of your sinews. Cold as the glacier be the purpose of your mind. All the powers of the Gnomes that were and are and shall be, flow through your veins!"

Oddly, Jeff, who was not a particularly religious or even superstitious Gnome, did seem to feel a Power flowing from the gnarled old hand straight into his body. He gasped and concentrated to contain it. It was like being poured full of light and warmth.

Granny took her hand off his head. "Now go! And quickly! And the bottle with the mixture is already in your pocket."

Jeff didn't even feel to see if it was true. If Granny said it was true, it was. And it was.

He backed out and down the ramp, then turned and ran hard until he remembered that he had not asked where he should run. And then ahead of him, bounding along, he saw a _flodk'nin_ heading straight for the town. He followed the speeding jackrabbit, for that was what _flodk'nin_ meant. It was a word the first Gnomes to the New World had brought from their deep burrows, and technically it meant "hare," but then a jackrabbit like the one Jeff followed was, technically, a hare.

He wondered when the _trof'sthun_ would appear, and then as he and the hare crossed the city limits, he saw it, a brown dog, big to him, and he recognized it. He whistled shrilly, and Tripper stopped his headlong run and looked toward him, his sharp ears straight up.

"Here, boy!" Jeff said, as he had heard Mabel and Dipper do. The dog trotted over, whining urgently. The hare had stopped to wash its face, like a cat, and ignored the dog. _Spellbound,_ Jeff thought.

The Gnome patted Tripper's side. "Don't worry. We're going to go help them. You know what you are? You're a tof'sthun, that's what you are. You're a—" he mentally translated—"a faithful dog! Good boy! Good boy!"

He took out the little bottle that Granny Gypsum had somehow slipped into his pocket. It held less than an ounce of a clear, faintly yellow liquid, and the numbers 6-6, in runic, had been etched in the glass.

Jeff had a flicker of inspiration: If a Gnome could count to 66, then 6-6 would be a way of writing it in Gnomish runes. And all you then needed was a sign like the humans had for zero, and suddenly a Gnome might count all the way to infinity.

However, he'd deal with that later. With the bottle unstoppered, he approached the strangely docile hare.

"You have to drink this," he told it gently. "Granny says."

* * *

Back in her hollow tree, Granny Gypsum nodded. "The three have come together. I see now a shadow of a hope."

The tom-squirrel jumped up into her lap, and she stroked it. "You did a good job of seeing for old Granny," she said, tickling its chin. At the moment, the squirrel was looking up at her, and she could see her old face through its eyes. It was, in fact, a seeing-eye squirrel.

She'd had to raise its intelligence to train it, though.

The squirrel said—though it didn't do so in words—"Do you really believe in ghosts?"

"Oh, I have to, dearie," Granny said. "For all my life, half of all my callers have been ghosts."

"Are _you_ going to be a ghost?"

"Not any time soon, dearie," Granny said. "Not anytime—whoops! There they go! Run, hare! Chase hare, dog! After them, Jeff! I hope they won't be late."

"They should arrive in time," the squirrel said.

"No, late as in 'the late Jeff,'" Granny said. "When you deal with such evil as they go to face, anything might happen. Blood must pay for blood."

The squirrel stretched. "Wake me if it does," it said.

Squirrels live lives of constant stark terror to the point where it takes something more horrible than a possibly unbeatable hostile ghost to disturb them.

But Granny sat in her chair stroking the dozing squirrel, in the darkness of her eyes and in the light of her mind, and softly sang an ancient Gnomian chant that would have been called a prayer, had the Gnomes not held their gods in some disdain. Their myths tended to show the deities in less than flattering detail.

Anyway, whether the chant was prayer or merely a formulation of her thoughts, she wished the warriors well.

She absently sipped her tea. It had cooled, so she heated it up by thinking about it.

Then she drank it, thinking, _Jeff is a good lad. Shame if he dies._


	20. Chapter 20

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **20: Stalking the Dead**

"It's _gone_?" asked Stanley, looking angry. "Just like that? Just packed up its crummy ghost bags and _left_?"

Stanford looked at his instruments again. They all stood in the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel Lodge Hall—Stan had made them all temporary Mackerels to get around the rules—the last spot in the Skull Fracture that they had examined. No trace of the entity remained—the detectors gave out only the normal, somewhat elevated above _normal_ normal, readings for Gravity Falls.

"I can't understand it," Ford said. "As a rule, a haunting entity cannot leave the site of the haunting. Unless somehow it has transformed into a wandering ghost. Let's go outside, just to be safe."

"Dude," Wendy said, "uh, Dr. Pines, I mean, if he's not in here, how will we be any safer goin' outside where he may be?"

"We'll have more maneuvering room outdoors," Stanford pointed out. "Come along."

They all trooped down to the parking lot and stood in a loose group. "Grunkle Ford," Dipper asked, "what's the difference between a haunting ghost and a wandering ghost?"

"It's a matter of will," Ford said. "Are you familiar with the _ka_ , the _ba,_ and the _akh_?"

"Egyptian?" Dipper asked.

"Oy!" Stan groaned. "I'm ass-deep in nerds!"

"Explain for them, Mason," Ford said with a hint of pride.

Dipper felt tongue-tied. "Um, well, I'm not sure. They're all ancient Egyptian names for the soul, but, um, well, the _ka_ is the soul in the body, the _ba_ is the released soul after death, and the _akh_ is the soul in the afterlife? Something like that?"

"Close," Ford said. "The _ka_ animates the body—and that's why the Egyptians mummified their dead, so the dwelling-place would continue to exist. The _ba_ is, well, a messenger spirit that can travel from the afterlife to the world and back again—the _ba_ is close to what we would call a ghost. The _akh_ , as you say, is the person's essence that goes on to its reward. Now, the ancient Greeks had the _psyche_ and the _pneuma_ —"

Through clenched teeth, Stanley asked, "Is. It. Gone?"

Ford sighed. "I can't say for sure. I fear not, though. Look, think of it like this: the spirit and the soul are somewhat different. The spirit is the person's emotional and reactive side—it doesn't think _per se_ , it simply reacts. The soul is the person's self-awareness, sense of self, identity. It thinks and plans. Some philosophers believe that the soul can slumber—that over centuries it becomes dormant—if the person doesn't go on after death to his or her final reward. That's why poltergeists and such are so chaotic—they're spirits with no mind behind them, just an emotional intensity. But a slumbering soul _can_ be re-awakened. Now, if that's happened, it's probably happened because our bad guy has killed two people and absorbed energy from them."

"So they jump-started him?" Stan asked.

"Not the metaphor I would have used, but yes, sort of," said Ford.

"OK," Wendy said. "Now, assuming that's happened—how do we track this thing down?"

"That is problematic," Ford admitted. "If it has indeed transformed into a wandering ghost, it can manifest anywhere, unpredictably. Now, I'll hazard a guess—just a guess, mind you—that the body of Esteban Pica lies buried beneath the Skull Fracture. What we might try to do is to excavate the grave, find the bones of the old missionary, and give them an appropriate burial—"

"Not in the Catholic cemetery," Teek said. "I don't think the Church would allow that."

Ford nodded. "Perhaps not. But—say at least a Christian burial."

Stan was rubbing his eyes. "Look, to do that, ya got to rip up the flooring! Geeze, that'll cost an arm and a leg!"

Ford shrugged. "I think the Agency might handle at least part of the expense—listen! Something's coming!"

They looked around wildly. Then, hurtling around the corner of the Skull fracture came first, a rabbit and next, a brown dog—who ran up to them, joyously leaping as high as five feet at the sight of them.

"Tripper!" yelled Mabel and Dipper in unison. He came to them, tail wagging and happily panting, as they petted him. Dipper said, "How did you get out?"

And Mabel asked, "What happened to your cone?"

Then someone else came huffing up. "Guys!" yelled Jeff. "Are you all OK?"

"So far," Stan said. "What're you doin' here, Jeff? Don't you have important Gnome business to do?"

"I'm doing it, the small man said grimly. "What are you looking for?"

"A ghost!" Wendy said. "And a mean one!"

"We think it's killed one or maybe two people," Dipper added.

"And one Gnome," Jeff said. "That makes it Gnome business, too. Whoa—what's with Tripper?"

The dog bristled, crouching slightly with his weight on his rear legs, and his muzzle wrinkled as he snarled. His tail dropped, low and tense, and his ears went back. He stared at—nothing, but moved in front of the group and growled out a warning.

Stanford turned on his anomaly detector. "There's a disturbance slowly approaching," he said. "It's in the alley beside the Skull Fracture and the boarded-up Old Time Dime Store."

"Dark in there," Dipper said, glancing to the west, where the sun was already below the cliffs, though the sky was still bright.

Mabel was hugging Tripper. "You can't attack it, boy!" she said. "It's a ghost!"

"Here you go," Jeff told her, offering her a sturdy cord. "Use this as a leash."

"Why . . . do you even have that?" Dipper asked.

"I lead a badger around," Jeff said. "If her leash breaks, I need a backup!"

Mabel tied the cord around Tripper's neck—"What did you do with your beautiful collar?" she asked—making it just tight enough to hold him securely without choking him.

"It's paused," Stanford said. "Let me try something." Raising his voice, he called out, "Esteban Pica! _In virtute Dei per fidem a Domino promulgata te. Et ab hoc loco judicandus sit a Deo._ "

A voice seemed to rumble from the very earth: _"Non! Moriemini tu et tuum mittatur in gehennam!"_

"What's goin' on?" asked Stan. "Why are you talkin' Greek?"

Ford licked his lips. "Latin. I'm rusty, but, well. Um—I commanded him to leave by the power of his faith and go to be judged. He just told us to die and go to hell."

"Some priest he is," Stan said. "Hey! Ghosty! You want a piece of us? Come on out, you jerk!"

"It's probably too light," Dipper said.

Jeff tugged at Ford's trouser leg. "Listen, you got stuff to fight it with?"

"We _hope_ so," Ford said tensely.

"OK, then tell it to meet us in the dark, away from any bystanders. Um—how about Creepy Hollow? We can get there in fifteen minutes, and it's not close to anybody the ghost might hurt."

"I want the kids to go home!" Stan said.

Jeff looked uneasy. "Uh—have they been in the presence of the ghost?"

"Yes," Teek said. "We all have."

"Sorry, you can't leave anybody out," Jeff told Stan. "This thing will attack the weakest first. You can't split up. Your only hope is facing it together. The Gnomes will help all we can."

"Are you nuts?" Stan asked.

Jeff said, "Stanley, you've been a friend to us. Trust me now."

"I think we have to," Ford said. "Twilight's coming on fast."

"Dammit!" Stan said. "OK. Tell the green gas-assed jerk to meet us there."

Again Ford called out something in Latin. "I hope that will suffice. I told him we will be waiting on the field of battle."

"He'll find us," Jeff said. "Let's go! Wait, where's my rabbit?"

They piled into the two cars—Jeff insisted on riding in the trunk of the Stanleymobile, together with the jackrabbit, which he curled around and cuddled against himself. They drove fast out of town, down the west highway, to the spot where once Fiddleford McGucket and his wife had lived in a cabin, now long-abandoned and collapsed. They hurried up a hill and crossed a small stream into what the Gnomes had always called Creepy Hollow—formerly waste ground, nearly a desert, but now being reclaimed by vegetation. They walked to a relatively clear spot, and Jeff called out in Gnomish.

In the years since Ford had banished the Sentivore, the monster that had lived in the cave called the Gack of Doom, the Gnomes had begun to return to the territory. A dozen of them swarmed to Jeff's call, and in their own language, he barked out a series of orders. They vanished in their effortlessly stealthy Gnome way. "They'll be here when we need them," Jeff said. Dr. Pines, are you all armed?"

"We are," Ford said. "I'm not sure we can destroy this entity—that depends on how strong it really is and to what extent it can manifest physically. But we can at least hold it off. What can your Gnomes do?"

"We have some tricks," Jeff said. "This is a crew who've worked before with minor ghosts. We'll see if they're up to this thing."

"Look," Dipper said, pointing up. "The stars are coming out."

Ford reached into his coat and took out a red lantern. "If I had time, I'd draw a protective pentacle," he muttered.

Teek, as though inspired, asked, "Do you have a spare vial of anointed water?"

Ford did, and he handed it over. Teek sprinkled it in a circle, murmuring, "Let no evil thing come into the presence of this circle. Heaven protect those who strive for good. Amen."

"Will that help?" Mabel whispered.

"Can't hurt," Stan said, patting Teek's shoulder. The darkness was coming on rapidly. The lantern, though red, sent out a brilliant glow. Tripper completely ignored the jackrabbit, which sat in their midst as if unaware of the humans and the dog.

Dipper noticed Tripper suddenly crouch. "I think something's happening," he said.

"I see it," Stan said, his voice tense. "That way, on the edge of the light."

"Hang onto Tripper, Sis," Dipper said.

Mabel put her wrist through the cord's loop. "I got him."

Again Ford called out his spell of exorcism. This time the ghost didn't curse them—but it laughed with an awful, liquid, bubbling sound.

Dipper strained to see it. It hung back, indistinct, on the fringe of the light. He could tell that it was man-sized. It definitely had substance—as it moved in a wide circle all around them, as if seeking a weak spot, it brushed weeds and saplings, and they stirred and bent.

"Everyone keep your anti-ghost rays ready," Ford warned. "Remember, don't hit anyone with them! Focus only on the apparition. I'm going to try to reveal it. Ready—now!"

Ford switched on not a ray gun, but a bright flashlight. The white light stabbed out in the deepening dusk and shone on—

Mabel yelped in alarm, and Wendy grabbed Dipper's arm, gasping.

The thing in the light didn't remotely look like a human.

It was—monstrous.


	21. Chapter 21

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **21\. Weird Battle in the West**

 _Comfort the hare._

Jeff the Gnome looked around—the voice seemed so close he felt sure that Granny Gypsum somehow stood right at his ear—

 _No. I am in your head, looking through the eyes of a terrified animal. Set the hare down and comfort it. I will help._

Jeff put the trembling jackrabbit down on the sandy soil and with hands gentler than his heart, he started to stroke it. He heard his own mouth speaking strange words, words in an ancient language he did not even understand. Granny Gypsum was speaking through him, to the little animal. The hare's trembling ceased, its ears rose like two defiant flags, and it stared, as they all did, at the monstrosity standing fifty yards away, dimly sketched by the fringe of the red lantern's glow.

As tall as most men, but shorter than Ford and Stan. Shaped not like a human, but more like—like—like a football on end, except for the weirdly-jointed legs. Hard to tell in the ruddy light, but it must have been a pale green, its skin rugose, ridged and wrinkled.

No head, but a human-like face showed at the top, eyes far too wide apart, squashed nose, bristles of coarse hair, a grinning slit of a mouth. It had . . . three human arms, two on the right, one on the left. Three other weird arms, insect-like or ratlike, ending in cruel pincers or sharp claws. A vertical, writhing, glistening slit pierced it all the way from where the human face's chin would have been, if it had one, down to the lower pointed base. This quivered and oozed slime.

In a ringing, commanding voice, Ford called out a spell of banishment, and the thing . . . laughed.

It was a horrible sound, gurgling and mocking, a sick sound, a triumphant and hateful one that made them feel like the target of its contempt.

Stanley broke the spell with a contemptuous retort of his own: "Laugh it up, sleazeball!"

Its laughter dying the creature took a step forward. Tripper, the cord leash tight in Mabel's grip, barked and snarled, his hackles bristling. Another dog might have read his posture and the sounds he made as "Touch my pack, you son of a bitch, and I'll rip your throat out!"

Except the monster had no throat.

Dipper gulped. The thing reminded him a little of the Shapeshifter, and it filled him with the same kind of dread. Teek was murmuring a prayer. Mabel was all about calming the poor dog, not concentrating on anything else. Wendy was muttering, "Come on, come on, come on, let's kill this thing!" But she sounded scared.

Only the hare remained calm. Without his own will behind the action, Jeff bent close to it and spoke into the long ear: "Your kind has short lives. Yours will be shorter than some others. But you have tasted the goodness of life, and death is a moment of pain and will end as soon as it begins. Then you will find yourself in a green world of long grass and succulent roots where summer is eternal. Others of your kind will meet you there. No enemies are there. You will live forever, and soon enough you will forget this world and its pains. But we will remember you. We will remember."

Jeff shivered inwardly, a passenger in his own body as Granny Gypsum drove. He kept thinking, _Let it be like she says, let it be, please, for all the creatures that do no harm and want to be good, please let it be._

All around the shambling horror, red caps erupted from the grass. Two dozen Gnomes loosed arrows or hurled spears, each arrowhead or spear tip dosed with secret Gnome formulas. They arced true and struck, and stuck—

"It has substance!" Ford shouted.

But the missiles did not stop the monster. It swatted them loose, the way a grizzly might swat at mosquitoes, turned, and briefly pursued two Gnomes, who vanished in the way Gnomes did.

"Now! Go!" Jeff said quietly to the jackrabbit. He felt Granny Gypsum leave his mind. But all on his own, he shouted, "Blood must pay!"

Astonishingly, even heroically, the jackrabbit ran true and straight for the creature. The monster did not even seem to notice the animal, smaller even than a Gnome, until the rabbit made the greatest and longest leap of its life.

Then the monster jerked toward it. The slit along its body opened into—a mouth. An enormous, vertical mouth, rows of teeth and folds of pulsating, nasty, glistening wet flesh inside. The jackrabbit arched into the opening, the obscene lips closed with a sick wet _crunch,_ and rumbling with its coarse, harsh laughter, the creature turned away from the vanished Gnomes and resumed its move, not coming straight for the defending group, but evidently trying to flank them to the right.

Ford snapped, "Don't lose your courage or your focus. Move to keep those of us with firearms facing the creature—me at point, Stan to my left, Dipper to my right. It will try to get close and then rush us. Watch for that!"

Dipper clenched the weapon. "Where's Jeff?"

"Right behind you. Don't worry about me."

"What happened to the rabbit?" Mabel asked. She had picked up Tripper and was holding him, his front paws over her shoulder.

"It's gone," Jeff said. "It's a secret weapon, though. Someone's taking care of it."

"But it died!" Mabel wailed.

Jeff's voice was reassuring: "That's only one way of looking at it. The rabbit doesn't think so."

Just then Ford staggered, groaning. The monster had launched an attack—an invisible one.

* * *

 _This is all my fault. I led my family to be slaughtered here! Mason and Mabel and my brother! I've led them all to their deaths!_

Ford could hardly keep his footing. He saw himself as a puny creature dominated by Pride, made foolish and blind and deaf by Pride, wasting all of his talents because of Pride—

Anger rose within him then, not useless or wicked anger, but an anger ignited by the creature's hypocrisy and malignity, a—he dithered mentally, but then thought, _A righteous anger!_

 _Would a man dominated by Pride surrender to the love he felt for his wife, his brother, his nephew and niece? Would he even know what love is? I know! I know!_

He hung onto that. Like a mantra, mentally he repeated, "Love is not proud! Love is not proud! Love is not proud!"

The monstrous creature lashed out again, mentally—he felt that his mistakes, his blundering, his obsessions, only hurt everyone he loved, everyone he esteemed, he was the cause of loss, the only cause, the—

Guilt clenched inside Ford so painfully that at first he thought he was having a heart attack—but then—

"Get out of my head!" he shouted aloud. "You—you heretic! Hypocrite! False prophet! We know who you are—failed priest, disgraced missionary, evil in the sight of your own God!

The pain eased suddenly. "It's using mental attacks!" Ford yelled, gasping. "Don't believe the lies it hits you with. Resist them—it serves the Father of Lies, remember that!"

* * *

Dipper winced as he, too, felt something invade his thoughts: _I've let Mabel down! We've drifted apart, and she's needed my help, and I'm too wrapped up in wanting Wendy and in my stupid writing and my guitar, and—_

All at once he saw with terrible clarity that everything he liked, making music, writing stories, even researching mysteries—everything was worthless, was stupid and useless, in the end helped no one, inevitably disappointed them, caused them pain—

Wendy reached back and touched his neck, and he felt her in his mind.

 _Dude, you're suffering! Don't believe whatever it's saying to you! It's lies, all lies, like Ford said!_

— _Wendy! I'll never be good enough for you—_

 _Forget that, lover! I'll decide that. I love you, man, and I love you because of who you are and what you are and for loving me and your sister and your Grunkles—_

His heart beat more easily then. And like a weightlifter straining to raise an impossible burden, he fought within himself, and the weight rolled away—

"It lies, everybody!" he yelled. "It tries to find your weak points! Don't let it!"

* * *

Stan got hit next— _Pretender! Your whole life has always been a lie! Not good enough for your family! Your father hated you! Your mother died alone and you weren't there! You sent your brother into hell—_

Ah, but Stan was made of different stuff. "Can it, Ugly!" he shouted. "You think you can con a master scammer? _You're_ the liar, you're the fraud, and we know it and you know it, and if there's a God you pray to, He knows it, too! Don't try that on us, you freak. You doomed yourself and damned yourself! It's all on you!"

"Don't break ranks," Ford warned as they shuffled more, keeping the same relative positions with regard to their enemy. "Hold your fire until you can't miss!"

They all staggered as a furious voice, unheard by ears, burst into all their heads at once: "I cannot be defeated!" It was a strange voice, part human, part the screech of rats, part the cry of a Gnome, and part—unforgettably, awfully—the scream of a perishing rabbit.

It is a terrible, heart-piercing sound, and once heard, it can never be forgotten. All the anguish of all the helpless prey in the world vibrates in the scream of a rabbit aware of its death, and it is a hopelessly hard heart that can hear it without pity.

"It's afraid," Jeff said.

Teek held something up—a rosary, wrapped around his fist, with the crucifix dangling. "You betrayed this!" he yelled, and though his voice broke like a fourteen-year-old's and though it quavered with fear, it still held confidence and belief. "You're not strong! Not strong at all! You're weak and scared and—and weak! You're the one that's doomed!"

"You butt-face!" Mabel added firmly.

That made Teek laugh. He yelled, "Mabel, I love you, and I don't care who knows it!"

She said, "That's good, 'cause I love you right back!"

"Hold onto that!" Wendy said. "This devil can't stand against love!"

"It's trying to wear us down," Ford said. "Looking for an opening. Wait until it's close enough so you can't miss—wait until you can't miss—"

Jeff yelled, "Gnomes! Get ready!"

* * *

Miles away, Granny Gypsum sat slumped in her armchair, blind eyes closed, chin on chest—and yet she saw it all, this time through the eyes of the faithful dog. "Almost time," she murmured. "Almost time. Everyone must act at once, or we lose and it wins. Almost time, young Jeff. Stone of the mountain! Coldness of the glacier! Hare, O Hare, your spirit may be beyond my thought, but know you did well! Small prey, fearful animal, may the hares of your Paradise know what a great thing you have done this night and forever honor you for it! Jeff—"

* * *

"Here it comes!" Jeff yelled. "Gnomes! Now! Everyone, wait, wait—Hit it now!"

And a shock like an erupting volcano shook the earth.


	22. Chapter 22

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **22: Last Stand**

Dipper had seen it once before, yet he gasped at the sight of a giant rising from the grass and knee-high brush—a giant composed of a hundred Gnomes, locked together, standing on each other's shoulders, acting as a unit controlled by—was that Shmebulock way up there as the giant's head?

The monster heard or sensed the rumble and turned, but in three strides the composite giant was on it, and it raised—something Dipper had _not_ seen before—a gigantic mallet, made from a heavy redwood stump the size of a 55-gallon drum and, as handle, a sturdy iron or steel pipe—maybe even, Dipper realized, a recycled lamp post.

The giant swung, and the hammer crashed down on the monster.

It squelched and splattered, but immediately it rose as a sluggish, nearly liquid mist—and flowed up the handle, toward the Gnomes.

Jeff shouted, "Retreat! Gnomes, don't let it touch you!"

The giant fell apart, and the individual Gnomes vanished in the undergrowth like mist before a strong breeze. At the far end of the handle, the entity started to reform itself—as a distinct group of skeletal dead bodies at first, two men, a Gnome, rats, and smaller things, including a jackrabbit.

Ford yelled, "Stan! Dipper! It's in range! Hit it with the ray!" He fell to a kneeling position, while Stan and Dipper fired over his shoulders. The red rays lanced out, striking the monster. It writhed, nearly lost its solidity again, and ran, or shambled, backward, beyond the reach of the weapons. "Cease fire!" Stan said. "Save your power. It will be back. Where's Jeff?"

"Right here," Jeff said, popping up beside him. "Sorry. I really hoped that would work."

Ford put his hand on Jeff's small shoulder. "It was a brave attempt. From this day forth, let no human call a Gnome small. Your courage is like—like a mountain!" He sighed. "But you'd better go now and join your friends. It doesn't look hopeful, and this is our fight."

"Yeah," Jeff said. "What you said is right. It's _our_ fight. Humans and Gnomes. One of our own was killed by that thing. If it's all the same to you—I'll stay."

"We'd be honored," Ford said. "Everyone, form up! Keep an eye out! There's no telling where that thing will come from next!"

"Here comes something!" Mabel yelled. Tripper squirmed, but she held tight to his leash.

They looked, dreading that misshapen horror, but what emerged from the rustling undergrowth was . . . a badger.

"My Queen!" Jeff said.

She came waddling up, gazed at him with sleepy affection, and then stood, her pudgy body low to the ground, gazing into the darkness. Jeff felt and said, "I see. Her leash broke. Shmebulock had to control the assembled Gnomes, so he probably left her tied to a tree. She shouldn't be here."

The badger made a kind of crackling growl. Her head went forward intently, the white stripe pointing like an arrow into the darkness.

"She's sensing something to the west," Jeff said. "She's in threat mode. That's where it is!"

"That way!" Ford said, pointing. "Teek, what are you doing?"

"Protective circle!" Teek, who had walked around the edge of the group, shook a vial, sprinkling the last drops of the anointed water and said a quick prayer, then hurried back into position.

The monstrous thing emerged from the gloom in a slow kind of plodding run, its body re-formed and apparently solid again. Its weird blend of voices wailed words that Dipper did not know.

Ford said, "Ready to fire. Wait . . . wait . . . a little closer . . . now!"

The three pistols shot their red beams, striking the creature, which seemed nearly to lose cohesion. It bulged and bubbled, its skin steamed, and then with a furious howl, it retreated. "Cease fire!" Ford said again.

"Sixer, it's gonna make us use up our batteries and then come for us," Stan said. "Think of something else!"

"I don't know of anything else!" Ford said. "If we could just get a kill shot—somewhere in the center of that mass is the essence of the rogue priest, the spark that is his soul. If we could—peel away the layers, somehow, we could at least contain it!"

"Wait, your Majesty!" Jeff yelled.

Too late. The monster was shambling around the periphery again. The badger Queen streaked toward it.

It saw her coming and—stamped on her. She screamed, gurgled, and died.

Jeff fell to his knees. "No! My Queen!"

"Hang on," Mabel said, grabbing the straps of Jeff's overalls. "She wouldn't want you to die, too."

"But she didn't understand what she was against!" Jeff moaned, heaving with sobs. "She didn't know!"

"It didn't stop to absorb her body," Ford said. "I can still see her lying there."

"Ya know," Stan said softly, "I'll bet her spirit was so pure that it would've killed that bastard to try to take it over."

Dipper gave his Grunkle a surprised glance, but Stan shook his head. Better to say nothing to Jeff right now. But Stanley had just given him something to hang onto.

"The Gnomes will avenge her!" Jeff said. "Uh—was that too melodramatic? Too much?"

"Under the circumstances," Teek said, "just right."

* * *

A moment later, everything around Jeff receded and he felt as if he were alone. No, there was someone else. He could not see her, but he recognized her none the less.

"Granny," he groaned, "it killed our Queen."

 _She was a brave Queen,_ Granny replied. _She died in defense of our people, and she shall be honored. May her spirit travel beyond the sunrise to the land of joy. But tell the others to be ready now. The hare's sacrifice is about to fulfill its purpose._

* * *

Then Jeff found himself back with the others, and the lurching, malevolent thing was coming slowly nearer and nearer.

"It's testing the firing limit of our ray guns," Ford said. "Hold your fire. Let it be drawn in."

"Guys!" Jeff said, "something's about to happen!"

"What?" barked Stan.

"I don't know. Be ready for anything!

Then the monster stopped and reeled. It swelled like a balloon being over-filled; it staggered. Its horrible vertical mouth opened wide in a rattling scream—and white light poured out.

"Fire into the mouth!" Ford shouted, and the three defenders armed with the guns did.

The staggering monstrosity reeled and stamped. It seemed to be shrinking. Steam poured from it as the three red rays streamed into its interior.

It hunched away, as if trying to shield itself from the attack.

Mabel suddenly handed Tripper's leash to Dipper. "Hold this!" She smacked the _lignum vitae_ croquet mallet into her hand. "This ends now!"

"Sis, no! Hold her, Teek!" Dipper yelled. "Guys, stop shooting, don't hit her!"

Stan and Ford ceased fire. Mabel ran right up to the thing, now sprawled face-down and wallowing, and whacked it with the mallet approximately where its head should be. It jerked, apparently injured.

But it wasn't as stunned as it had seemed. Before Mabel could hit it a second time, one of its human arms slashed at her, hitting her hard, knocking her rolling. The mallet went flying, fell to earth, and Dipper nearly tripped over it.

Wendy was there—she had run at Dipper's heels. Dipper pulled Mabel up. She seemed loose, unconscious. "Get her back!" he yelled to Wendy. "Tripper, keep Mabel safe! Go with her! Go! Keep her safe!"

Wendy picked up Mabel and ran back with her, Tripper loping beside her, growling and barking back over his shoulder. At point-blank range, Dipper fired his ray into the creature. Where the ray touched, the flesh, the fake flesh, the dead flesh, whatever, bubbled and steamed away. He backed up step by step, back toward safety—

The creature sprang up, much diminished—now not much taller than Dipper, and more rat-like, though its horrible vertical mouth kept opening and closing. It fell forward, now on four legs, and bounded toward him.

"Hit the dirt!" Stan yelled, and Dipper did, allowing Stan and Ford to open fire.

For an instant the thing paused, and Dipper leaped up to run to the others.

But then, with infernal purpose, the entity lunged forward and seized Dipper's ankle. He fell on his face hard, the wind huffing out of him. "Hang on!" he heard Wendy shout.

He'd dropped his gun, but he fumbled at his belt and found the _lignum vitae_ croquet stake that he had thrust in, like a sword.

Half-dazed, he thought, _Maybe I can jam its mouth open_ —

It stood on two legs, pulling him up, hugging him. It stank of rot, filth, and death. Now the distorted human face, smaller on the shrunken body, glared at him with popping, insane eyes. It screamed, " _Peccator! Et te perduint_!"

Swinging upside down, hanging by his ankle, Dipper couldn't focus on the mouth, open now, seven or eight rows of teeth clashing.

Instead of trying to wedge the stake, he drove its point hard against the hateful face. It sank in maybe an inch and stuck. Dipper wouldn't let go, but he couldn't force it deeper.

And then the monster began to drag him into the hellish maw.


	23. Chapter 23

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 14, 2016)**

 **23: Now or Never**

Swinging by one leg, struggling not to be eaten, Dipper clung to the stake, barely lodged in the stinking thing's skin. He heard a confusion of yelling, smelled burning flesh as, inches below him, Stan's and Ford's rays cut into the entity's stolen body.

Then somebody's arm wrapped around his waist and Wendy yelled, "Gotcha, man!"

"Wen—Wendy—get back, get away—" he gasped.

She yelled, "Hold still!"

He heard a loud _swack!_ as his right hand vibrated, and realized that Wendy was using the butt of her axe to drive the stake in. He flailed and touched her skin. — _Again, Wendy! Harder! Don't mind if you hurt me!_

 _Hang on, Dip! Uggh, it's got my leg too!_

He felt Wendy twist and swing, and with their connection, he knew just how to hold the stake, and this time— _SWACK!—_ it plunged through a stolen human skull and deep into the entity—

"Gotcha, Wendy! Hang on, girl!" Stan.

Dipper felt as if he were about to pass out, but he thought— _One more time, Wendy! Hard!_

He let go at just the right instant, and Wendy's axe drove the lignum _vitae stake_ in to the hilt.

The monster shuddered and screamed, flailing, whipping Dipper away from Wendy. _This is it_ , he thought. The creature was going to slam him to the ground and kill him—

—but it didn't.

Ford yelled: "Get Mason down! Use your axe!"

Dipper heard the chunk of Wendy's axe biting deep, once, twice, and then he fell—

"Gotcha!" It was Stan's night for gotchas. He caught Dipper and said, "Get this damn thing off his leg, Poindexter!"

Stan lay him on the ground and Ford loomed up in his vision. "Mason, can you hear me? Lie absolutely still!"

Then the _zzzt!_ of Ford's ray gun, and whatever clamped his ankle fell away. "Wendy—Mabel—" Dipper said, rolling over to his stomach and pushing himself up.

"We're OK, Brobro!" Mabel said. "I just got knocked a little silly—sillier! Yuck, yuck!"

"What happened?" Dipper asked as Stan pulled him to his feet.

"Take a look, champ!" Stan said, turning on a flashlight.

The monstrous thing stood behind him—except—

"A tree stump?" Dipper asked. "Seriously?"

"The _lignum vitae_ transformed its corrupted flesh to wood!" Ford said.

Wendy was busy with something—and then Dipper realized she was chopping at a knot of wood that had formed around her left ankle. "Be just a sec," she said. She chipped until it fell into two halves. "There, that's better. Did you get bit, Dip?"

He patted his chest and stomach. "Don't think so. You?"

"Nope. It was scared of my axe. Didn't expect me to have one that could cut ghosts!"

Dipper looked again. The five-foot tall tree stump looked old and rotten. The arm that had seized him had changed to a branch, which Wendy had lopped off. He guessed that a twisted root showing a fresh cut had grabbed hold of her ankle. The top of the trunk was broken at a forty-five-degree angle, and hollow. "We killed it?" he asked.

"Not yet," Ford said. "We have more work to do, and not much time."

"Ah, geeze," complained Stan. "Here we go again!"

* * *

Mabel and Teek went off a little way, and Dipper realized that a forlorn Jeff stood over near them in the brush. "Come on," he said to Wendy, while Ford was explaining to Stan. They walked over.

Mabel knelt beside Jeff and Dipper heard her say, "I'm so sorry."

The badger, dead, lay sprawled on her belly. Jeff was stroking her back. "She tried to help us," he murmured. "She was a real Queen."

Tripper came up and leaned against Jeff, whimpering. Mabel explained, "He's sorry, too."

Jeff stood and gave a high, ululating call. Half a dozen Gnomes appeared from the brush. One, Shmebulock, was crying, tears running into his beard. He stood before Jeff, his face wrenched with grief. Tremulously, he said, "Shme—Shmebu—" Then he clenched his hands and hoarsely rasped out the barely recognizable words, "Sorry, Jeff."

Jeff put his arm around the other Gnome's shoulders. "Don't try to speak, friend. I know about your curse and how trying to talk hurts you. I understand. We don't blame you. The Queen broke loose and came to—" he gulped—"to help us. She died protecting our people. Tomorrow we honor her—and Wembley."

One of the other Gnomes—Steve, Dipper thought—asked in some confusion, "Who? Wembley? But he was just a fer—"

"He was a _Gnome!_ " Jeff said in a decisive voice. "He was one of ours! And we. Will. Honor. Him!"

The others nodded. "Shmebulock?" asked you-know-who.

Jeff cleared his throat. "Shmebulock, you and these others carry Her Majesty back to the funeral glade. We'll hold her services—and Wembley's—tomorrow. Then send thirty Gnomes to meet me at the Skull Fracture. Ask among the homeless ferals, the miners, because we'll need diggers! And tell the ferals, all of them, that if they want to return, we fully accept them and we'll share what we have with them, Gnome for Gnome. They're our brothers and sisters. Make that clear! We're family."

The six Gnomes lifted the Queen, tenderly, and took her body away. "Come on," Jeff said. "This isn't over."

When they got back to Ford and Stan, Stan was just putting away his phone. "No bars here," he said. "I'll call Dan as soon as we get in range. OK, so you're tellin' me we gotta root this stump up?"

"We do. And before you ask why, just listen," Ford said, pointing to the hollow opening.

Dipper heard it then, a high-pitched sound like a maddened hornet in a glass jar. "Is that—him?" he asked.

"All that's left is the raw soul of Esteban Pica," Ford said. "He's imprisoned in the wood—and since it's lignum vitae, he can't work his way out. He's trapped for now, but we have to end this—and it has to be before midnight. Teek, Dipper, you help us."

As it turned out, they did not have to uproot the stump, because it had no real roots. They pushed, and Mabel said, "Aw, he's no fun. He fell right over!"

The wood was dense and unbelievably heavy, and it took Dipper, Teek, Stan, Ford, and even Wendy to haul it back across Creepy Hollow, over the stream, and drag it down the hill. A solemn Jeff led the way with a flashlight, Mabel walking next to him, Tripper close beside Mabel.

They heaved the tree stump into the trunk of the Stanleymobile, though they couldn't close it and had to bungee-strap the lid down.

Dipper and Wendy rode back with Stan, Mabel, Teek, and Tripper in the back seat. Jeff rode with Ford, who had plans to tell the Gnome.

On the way, as soon as they were within phone range, Stan had Wendy call her dad and put him on speaker. Stan said, "Danny! How ya doin'?"

"Stan? I'm all right!" Manly Dan had no inside or phone voice.

"Listen, we all want you back in the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel. Tell ya what, you do one little job for us tonight, ASAP, we'll waive your dues for the next five years. An' I'll promise to buy you your own private stock of whatever brew you want—"

"I don't know if I wanna join up again!"

"Daddy," Wendy said, surprising Dipper. "For me."

With no hesitation, Dan continued, "OK, I'll do it for my baby girl."

"Listen, bring your carpenter's kit and stop an' stop and pick up Soos. We'll need him, too. I'll call him and he'll be ready. We got a rush job at the Skull Fracture."

"What—"

Stan overrode him: "Danny, do me a favor and don't ask me any questions, 'cause only my brainy brother could answer them, and he ain't here. But this is important to the whole town, includin' my family and yours."

"Half an hour!" roared Manly Dan.

* * *

By the time Dan's pickup jounced into the Skull Fracture lot, it was close to ten p.m. Soos got out, looking bewildered. "Hiya, Mr. Pines, I mean Stan. What's, like, up, dawg?"

"We," Stan said, "by which I mean you and Dan here, are gonna rip up the floor of this joint. Let's go, go, go!"

Ford gave Teek, Dipper, and, after a moment of hesitation, Mabel the ray guns. "Keep this stump covered," he warned them. "If you see any glimmer of light at all—shoot it! Wendy, you chop it with your axe!"

"With pleasure," she said.

The guys had wrestled the stump out of the trunk and had set it upright. The harsh glare of the parking-lot sodium-vapor light made it look sinister, like a sculpture of evil in twisted wood. The four teens and Tripper—who wanted nothing to do with the stump and kept behind Mabel, protectively close—stood on watch, the yellow light fixture fizzing overhead, surrounded by moths, as they guarded the stump. The frantic high-pitched buzzing—actually a human voice, if the human had been only a couple inches tall—still issued from the dark opening at the top. It spoke Spanish and Latin, but so rapidly and so high-pitched that Dipper couldn't even catch an entire phrase.

"Thanks for coming for me," Dipper murmured to Wendy.

"Hey, I had no choice! I know you got a present for me comin' up on the thirty-first, and I don't wanna miss out on it!" She nudged him. "Anyway, you promised to take me to Woodstick on Friday!"

A short way off, Mabel and Teek were whispering.

The sound of hammering and the squeal of crowbars prying up old nails poured out of the open back door of the Skull Fracture. At half-past eleven, Ford came to the door. "We found it. Teek, we need you and Soos. The ghost was Catholic."

A bunch of oddly dressed Gnomes came out of the door, tilted the tree trunk, and carried it inside. Gnomes are a lot stronger than most people would think.

Dipper and Wendy walked in behind the Gnomes, and Teek and Mabel and Tripper followed. Dipper didn't know exactly what he would see—

* * *

 **From the Journals of Dipper Pines:** _I was holding Wendy's hand. They had all the lights on in the bar. Most of the floor of the main room had been taken up and the warped boards with their rusty nails lay in a pile near the bar. The musty smell of dug-up earth rose strong. Below us, a dozen or more Gnomes were working—they had excavated a round hole, maybe six feet in diameter, that looked very deep, and the loose dirt they had shoveled out had been spread almost all the way to the floor joists._

" _What are they doing?" Mabel asked._

" _I think they're building some kind of crane," I told her. The Gnomes had put up a triangular framework over the hole—the three stout wood beams rose above the former level of the floor by a couple of feet—and Soos, standing up to his knees in the crawl space, was hooking up a block and tackle._

" _OK, Gnome dawgs," he said. "I think this'll do it. Who's goin' down?"_

 _Jeff, already dirty, stepped forward. "I ought to."_

" _No!" another young Gnome with black hair and beard, and dressed differently—not the red and blue that Jeff wore, but an orange that now was all dirty—"This is underground work. I'm a miner. I go down."_

 _Jeff smiled in a tired way. "Son," he said, "let's both go down together."_

" _I'm not your son!" the other Gnome snapped._

" _Well, really we're all family," Jeff said quietly. The orange Gnome, his clothes I mean, looked at some others similarly dressed. After a couple of seconds, they nodded._

" _All right," he said grudgingly. "But this changes nothing."_

" _Climb on, dudes," Soos said. "You got your lights? OK, I'll let you down easy." The two gnomes grabbed hold of the rope, and Soos lowered them._

" _How deep is that?" I asked._

" _They found the body at fifteen feet and a bit," Ford said from the other side of the torn-up floor. "We're preparing for re-burial."_

" _Just take it out and burn it!" Wendy said._

" _No dice," Stan said. "Brainiac says we can't pay back evil with evil. I dunno, sounds like a square deal to me!"_

" _Stop!" Jeff's voice echoed up through the hole. "All right, Shale, here we go. Pass it under. Here, tie off. Good knot! One more round . . . OK, Soos, haul away, then send the rope back to us."_

" _And watch out, it stinks!" warned the angry voice of the other Gnome, Shale, I guess._

 _Soos heaved on the block and tackle, and something dark came up. It was a lump, about the size of, I don't know, a football tackling dummy, if it had been tied in a fetal position. It did smell really bad, rotten enough to make Tripper gag._

 _The Gnomes hauled it away from the hole, and then Soos brought Jeff and Shale back up._

" _Now," Ford said. "Soos, the ghost was once a man who professed the Catholic faith. What we need to do is first to bless the body and then re-bury it with the proper ritual. And then before we fill in the hole, we'll send the tree trunk down after it."_

" _Ya gotta be kiddin' me!" Stan said._

" _I assure you, I'm not," Ford said. "We don't have much time."_

 _Soos took off his hat. Teek jumped down into the crawl space. "Uh—I know we don't have blessed oil, but is there any consecrated water?" he asked._

 _Ford supplied him with a small vial. Teek looked at Soos. "I guess—maybe unction and the last rites? Can you speak the prayers? He can't respond, so I'll try to do it for him."_

" _This is, like, solemn, guys," Soos said. Wendy and I took off our hats. I could see now that the body had been wrapped up in animal skin or thick cloth and then covered with dark tar that seemed to have hardened like stone. Teek accepted a handkerchief from Grunkle Stan and spread it out on the lumpy shape. With one hand touching it, Teek bowed his head as Soos murmured questions. Teek gave quiet responses. Teek sprinkled a bit of the consecrated water on his fingertips and touched them to the lump and said something. And then Soos made the Sign of the Cross._

 _He looked up. "That's the hardest part, guys. But now I'm gonna let him back down into the earth and we'll say a Psalm for him. Everybody who knows the words, join in."_

 _He let the body down, cut the rope and let it drop. And then he said, "The Lord ruleth me; I shall want nothing. . . ."_

 _Mabel began to murmur, "The Lord is my shepherd . . . ." I recognized the 23_ _rd_ _Psalm and joined in, though Mom's Protestant version was a little different from Soos's._

 _To my surprise, Grunkle Stan spoke softly, too, in Hebrew. I learned enough from Dad to know that the words were "I want for nothing, for Adonai is my shepherd . . . ."_

 _We didn't say it in unison at all, or even in the same words, but we all said it, except the Gnomes. But then after the first couple of lines, Jeff cleared his throat and said quietly, "Fellows, the Prayer of Deep Passing. Ready?" And the Gnomes began to drone, "Lo, the way before me is deep and dangers lie in the dark, but I will not fear, for Right guides my steps. . . ."_

 _Weird. Even they have the same basic notions. Mabel was sobbing as she spoke. I really hope the evil old priest at last felt a little bit sorry for his deeds. He made my sister cry for him._

 _Soos said another prayer or two and then he sprinkled the consecrated water into the grave. I don't know what I expected, fire and brimstone, maybe, but it did not happen. Then the Gnomes tied the tree trunk so it dangled exactly over the pit. The maddening buzz still came from inside it. "Time?" Ford asked, hopping down and taking something from inside his coat._

" _Two minutes to midnight," Stan said, checking his watch. "If you're gonna do it on this date, do it now!"_

 _Ford took something silvery from inside his coat. He called what sounded like a command—but in Latin—into the trunk, and then took what he held—a grenade? It looked like one! He actually pulled a pin and dropped it into the hollow of the tree._

 _A moment later, as though the tree had become a giant flashlight, a blinding white light shot out of it in a beam. White smoke or steam billowed. Ford yelled in English, "Go into the light! Drop it, Soos!"_

 _Soos chopped the supporting rope, and the tree trunk hurtled into the dark, jetting that brilliant beam upward._

" _Fill it in!" Ford said._

 _Slate relayed the order, and the mining Gnomes refilled the shaft that in record time._

" _Thank you, everyone," Ford said, sitting slumped on the edge of the torn-up floor. "That was a close call."_

" _Did we win?" Wendy asked._

" _I think we have," Ford said. "I'll know for sure tomorrow, but right now—yes, I think we have."_

* * *

The trapped greenish spark that was the soul of Esteban Pica raged. The prayers rained down on it like fire and brimstone and hurt. The spirit had not hurt like this in memory. And then the water splashed and it heard voices calling it, commanding it to do what it had resisted doing for hundreds of years. It struggled, infuriated.

And then—light filled its world, and a voice ordered it in Latin, "Go into the light!"

The spirit had no eyes to close. It could not look away from that intolerable glare. But there—a different, dimmer spot of light, a far-away circle of dull red. It fled into that—

And fell, full of despair into—

Judgment.

And what came afterward.

* * *

Then it was practically over. Well, almost. Not quite.

Because the passing of souls through this world, like the passing of ships through an ocean, leaves wakes behind. Loose ends. Grief and relief.

The living still had responsibilities to fulfill, and things to think about.


	24. Chapter 24

**The Haunting of the Holy Mackerel**

* * *

 **(August 15, 2016)**

 **24: Loose Ends**

Though they both got to bed late on Sunday night, Dipper and Wendy did their morning run that Monday. True, they started an hour later than usual, since the Shack was closed Mondays, but even so, by the time they returned laughing and gleaming from the exercise, Mabel had not yet crept out of bed.

The Ramirezes were up, though, and Abuelita had come through with one of her Mexican breakfast specialties: egg-and-cheese _molletes_ , with slices of ripe avocado and broiled tomato on the side, followed by _pan dulce_ , sweet buns glazed and sprinkled with cinnamon sugar.

Wendy and Dipper dug in, and before they had finished, Mabel showed up, rubbing her eyes. Tripper trotted right beside her, as though he'd decided he was her official palace guard from here on out.

They were on their second cups of coffee when Ford and Lorena and Stan and Sheila came in. Abuelita took the little ones to their play room, and with Soos's permission, Ford said, "We've still got some work ahead of us. Melody, I don't want to upset you—Soos was never in danger, but he might have been, so he acted bravely. In addition, he was an immense help, and he deserves to be in on the tidying-up, if he wishes."

"Dr. Pines, dawg!" he said. "Sure, I want to be in on it! I'm sort of immense!"

"All right," Ford said with a smile as he poured himself a cup of coffee. "Let me bring you up to speed."

* * *

Early that morning (Ford said) the Agency's top forensic pathologist had examined the remains found at the service station. Though the clothing had hair and skin flakes and provided a good DNA sample—it had not yet been typed, of course—the gelid mass seemed to be homogenized and unidentifiable proteins. "We really don't have a body for Mr. Vetch," Ford said. He sighed. "So Blubs is going to put it on the books as a "voluntary disappearance." He thinks Vetch is a drifter—despite the fact that he spent his life in Gravity Falls—who just wandered off looking for a better job. At least Vetch has no family to be worried about him, poor man."

As to the other victim, Dwight "Honker" Dillinberg, who lived south of Bend, his crew of bikers thought he'd probably shoved off ahead of some bill collectors or the I.R.S. He'd been in financial straits recently, they knew. Dillinberg's landlady hadn't seen him since the previous Thursday and thought he was probably off drunk somewhere, because he was worthless. His employers were ready to fire him for unreliability.

"Nobody's gonna miss him, case closed," Stan said dryly. He followed Ford's lead and got himself a steaming mug of coffee.

Mabel looked up, her eyes red. Quietly, she said, "That's not fair to them. What happened to them wasn't _their_ fault. Grunkle Ford, are they—you know, really _gone_?"

"Yes," Ford said heavily. "I'm afraid they are."

Mabel drooped. "It's just not right. Couldn't we—I don't know—at least have a memorial service?"

"I think that would be nice," Melody said, reaching across the table to take Mabel's hand.

"We can do something private," Wendy volunteered. "Just us, the ones who know about what happened."

"Yeah, I'm sure Dr. Gaspell would accommodate," Stan said. "Sort of non-denominational, but spiritual, that the idea?"

They said it was, and Stan made a phone call. The genial minister who had performed the wedding ceremonies for Stan and Sheila and Ford and Lorena listened and agreed at once. "When?" he asked.

"As soon as possible," Stan said.

A pause. "If you really mean that, I'm free this evening."

So they set it for seven p.m., in the Shack. Stan grinned at Mabel. "Pumpkin," he said, shaking his head fondly, "you got a big heart. Thank you for keepin' us human."

On Ford's advice, they agreed to have the disabled pink motorcycle crushed at a junkyard outside the Valley. Honker wouldn't need it any longer, and though they'd broken the ghost's possession of the machine, there was no sense in taking chances. Ford mentioned James Dean and his fatally haunted automobile, and they cast their votes for the crushinator.

"Now," Ford said, "this next part concerns Mason. Feel free to refuse this, nephew. You know someone who can look into the Mindscape and tell us if Pica has really, um—"

"Gone on to his, like, reward," Soos said helpfully.

Ford nodded. "Yes, exactly."

"I'll do it this evening," Dipper said. "That seems to be the best time."

* * *

Later that morning, the Gnomes performed their funeral march and spoke their eulogies. It was an enormous meeting—the new Gnome, the one good at arithmetic, Winziger, told Jeff the crowd easily numbered over two thousand "in real figures, not Gnome thousands."

First, of course, the assembly said farewell to their Queen, the late badger. She had been a good Queen, though admittedly she had come to power by eating their former Queen. Still, her advice had been sound, and despite the malcontents who suspected that Jeff was actually doing the thinking and not just interpreting her will, the Gnomes' lives had improved over the past few years under her reign. They wept at her passing, and they ate jam in her memory.

Then Jeff , speaking in the great clearing, said, "We lost another of our own, and we must remember and honor him. His name was Wembley, son of Mr. and Mrs. Grizzle there."

Some of the crowd began to murmur. Jeff said loudly, "Yes! Yes, he left us and went feral four seasons ago! But he was young. He didn't really know what going feral would mean. And if we had been better Gnomes and had offered him a little help and understanding, he might have stayed with us! But feral or civilized, he was one of us! He was our brother! And now his spirit has flown beyond the sunrise, and I say we honor him and speed him on this last journey."

Shmebulock, somewhere in the middle of the crowd, said, "Shmebulock!"

"Young Shmebulock is right," added a cracked old-woman voice. "And so is Jeff."

The crowd parted, gasping. Leaning on her staff, her seeing-eye squirrel walking slightly ahead of her, Granny Gypsum came forward. For most of them, it was their first glimpse of the legendary old sorceress, and many held their children up so they could see her, too. Jeff helped her up onto the hillock that was the speaker's place. "He's right," she said again, settling into a hunched-over stance, gripping her staff. Everyone noticed that her squirrel sat upright before her and that its head turned at the same time and in the same direction of hers as she spoke. And it stared at them. Though it sounded old, her voice rang clear and loud: "You all know me. You're _afraid_ of me, but you _know_ me! And I say you'd best listen to me. I tell you again, young Jeff speaks true."

Jeff noticed that even those who had looked indecisive started to nod when she said that. _It's her magic,_ he thought.

The old woman nodded, too. "Listen to Granny, you diggers and you tree-dwellers. I tell you, blood knows blood! You all have the blood of the Gnomes in you! This foolish fighting, civilized, ferals, surface dwellers, tunnel dwellers, all this has to end. It _will_ end, too. It can end with us being one people and thriving—or it can end with us being stubborn and fighting each other and dying out, like the sad last leaves of autumn. I tell you, the time for Queens is over."

Even with _her_ saying it, the words hit hard. People looked shocked, blinked, wept again. "No!" someone shouted.

"Yes, Emmett Whetstone!" Granny shot back. "This is only a suggestion, mind, but let Jeff remain the Prime Minister. He's done a good job for the surface Gnomes! Look at how prosperous you've become! How respectable! Even the Big'uns greet you and welcome you!"

Murmurs of "Yes," "That's true," and "I ate a rat last night"—that last from one of the diggers, who'd roused perhaps the sole surviving rat in the depths below the Skull Fracture and who'd dined well.

Granny held up her hand for attention. "I say this: Give Jeff a council of advisors to help him. Young Winziger knows numbers and business. He can be the Finance Minister. Elada Gneiss, where are you? There you are. How many children have you and your Mister raised? Seventeen! There, Elada can advise on matters of family and marriage and such. Old Gnarl, where are you? There in the back, you old rascal!" Granny cackled. "You're nigh as old as me, and you know all the Lore, top to bottom, don't you? You will be the Lore Minister and remind Jeff of our traditions!"

Jeff watched in disbelief. In five minutes, Granny Gypsum launched, pursued, and won victory in a political revolution. She appointed seven advisors—with him as Prime Minister. "Why seven?" he whispered to her.

"Because that way, you don't get any ties," she whispered back. "Worst it'll be is four to three, one way or t'other. You get to pose the question, but you can't vote. You can offer arguments for or against. But _they_ get to vote. Make it that they _has_ to vote, no abstaining. Then, like it or not, you carry out their decision. 'Cause we can trust you!"

After a moment, Jeff raised his hands and the crowd grew quiet and expectant. "Thank you, Granny," he said. "If we're really doing this, though, let's do it right. Who _doesn't_ want me to continue as Prime Minister?"

Muttering rose among the digging Gnomes, but surprisingly, young Shale yelled out, "We're behind you, Jeff!"

"Thank you, Shale," Jeff said. "I want you to be the—" he leaned down and whispered to Winziger, "What's a nicer word than go-between?" Winziger replied, and Jeff continued: "—the Liaison-in-Chief between the—we can't call you ferals anymore. How about the Traditional Gnomes?"

Some little discussion and they agreed.

"Between the Traditional Gnomes and the, uh, the—what are we?"

"The Sunlighters!" somebody yelled.

"That OK with everybody? All right! So Shale will be the liaison, the diplomat, between our two branches, the Sunlighters and the Traditionals. But from now on, we're two halves of the same whole. One Gnome is all Gnomes, and all Gnomes are one!" Jeff wasn't sure that made sense, but it sounded good at the moment. He hurried on: "If that's settled, then who _does_ want me to continue as Prime Minister?"

In Gnome Lore, that went down as the rarest day ever: The Day We All Agreed.

Jeff, all on his own, and without the Queen's input, then proposed, "I accept, but look, if this doesn't work out, we're free to go back and choose a Queen again, OK? And we'll do it anytime most of you want that. If I make the majority of you mad, you can throw me out and choose somebody else for this job—"

"Jeff forever!" someone yelled.

Jeff grimaced. "Thanks, Mom. We'll think it over. Maybe we want to choose a new Council every so often, and a new Prime Minister. We may want to reconsider using owls as our judges. They always want to eat the defendant, and I'm not sure that's fair. We'll meet and take advice from everybody and work things out. Anyway, I thank you all. And as we go through this—this great change, let's not forget those whom we honor today. Queen Badger. Wembley, son of the Grizzles. May their spirits fly free and far, and one day may we meet them again!"

* * *

At about the same time, Manly Dan Corduroy wasn't exactly sure about all that business the previous night, but that Monday morning he went in to his lumber mill and personally chose some hickory for new flooring. It was good seasoned hardwood, it would last, it would be sturdy, and—he thought—it would brighten up the joint a little. Make it a tad more airy than the dark-gray splintered, brittle, warped stuff that he and Soos had crowbarred up.

He grabbed a pad and pencil and did the figuring without a calculator—he was a master at estimating and could lay a floor and have no more than a plank and a half overage—and then worked out the cost, thought for a bit, and last of all he marked it up by only fifteen per cent. He called Tats, not Digges, and made the proposal. "Labor'll be extra," Dan rumbled, "but I'll put four good men on it and I'll supervise the job myself. It'll take two days, tops. It's a good price, best Digges could get anywhere, and I guarantee the result."

"I'll talk Digges into it," Tats said. "'Bout time we got rid of them rats and replaced that shanky old floor, anyways. Draw us up the contract. Hey, brother, you comin' back into the lodge? We sure do miss you."

"Aw," Dan said. "I dunno. I'm real busy and all, but—well, yeah, I guess maybe so."

"Welcome back, fellow Mackerel," Tats said with a chuckle.

"Feels good to be back," Dan admitted. He hung up, told his clerk to draw up the contract with the specs, and wondered just what the hell all that last night had been about.

* * *

"You really mean it, Mr. Pines?" Soos asked, his voice hushed with awe. The two stood outside the Shack, in the shade of one of the redwoods, and Soos's eyes grew huge and shiny, like those of a kid on Christmas morning.

"Yeah, 'cause you really oughta earn that fez," Stan said with a nod at Soos's headgear. "Look, I talked to the membership chairman, and if you really wanna be a Mackerel, you're in. And call me Stan!"

"Thanks, Mister, I mean Stan! You'll never regret it! I already know the secret handshake and all from watching you, so I'll hit the ground running, or, like, the water swimming, or whatever, dawg, sir."

"Yeah," Stan—who, by the way, happened to be the membership chairman and committee all in one— said. "Right, I'll never regret it. Just gotta keep reminding myself."

* * *

That evening their brief memorial service moved Mabel to tears—again. No one really knew much about Mr. Vetch or Mr. Dillinberg, but Dr. Gaspell read from John Donne—"No man is an island"—and from Job, and they bowed their heads as he prayed that it would be well with their souls.

"I feel better," Ford admitted later. "It wasn't much—but the two men were part of our community, a resident and a visitor, anyway, and saying farewell and having good will for them both leaves me with a good feeling. Hmm—this is an area I'll have to study more."

"You do that," Stan said, rolling his eyes.

Wendy and Dipper walked Dr. Gaspell back to his car. "Wendy," the minister said in his warm, soft voice, "haul your dad and brothers into church a little more often. It can't do them any harm, and it might do you a little good, too."

"I'll do what I can," she said, smiling.

He paused at his car and smiled back at the two young people. "And speaking of that, is there anything you might want me to do for you?" he asked.

Dipper squirmed a little. Oh, his dad wouldn't insist on a Jewish ceremony, and his mom would be happy with any church wedding, but—

"Maybe in about a year," Wendy said, comfortably linking her arm through Dipper's.

"Mm, well. You two behave yourselves until then," Dr. Gaspell said, with a twinkle in his eye.

After he drove off, Wendy and Dipper continued their walk—inevitably to the bonfire clearing. "You ready to do it?" Wendy asked.

"Yeah," Dipper said. "It always scares me a little, though."

She caressed his neck. "Hey, remember I'm right here with you. All the way, Dip."

"Thanks, Lumberjack Girl," he said.

They kissed. Then he settled onto the log, closed his eyes, and in the Mindscape got ready to ask Bill Cipher if they really and truly were safe from the terrible thing responsible for the haunting of the Holy Mackerel Lodge Hall.

* * *

 _The End_


End file.
